Added 1/11/10 6:58 PM

When creating a video, podcast or musical/vocal/sound recording using modern recorders, cameras and sound effects it is important to understand both how sound works and how sound files are stored onto your computer.

Here are some common Audio Formats:

AAC- (Advanced Audio Coding)- This audio format is now the standard format for all Apple audio files and MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 video codecs.  This format plays at up to 128 kbit/s.  As far as application goes, AAC is a high quality format that although compressed is better than mp3, which is why Apple and PS3 are using this.  I reccomend using this file in your movies if you can't use uncompressed audio or .wav files or your player does not support this format yet, although most do at this point.

Added 1/11/10 7:18 PM

AC3- Audio format created by Dolby, is not commonly used in editing audio files however, it is used in DVD players to decode dvd audio files so you may sit it when burning a project but the likelyhood that you can use it is low.  

MP3- The MP3 file format is the original digital audio music file format that is commonly known to all of us, however,  this format although widely accepted by many programs the quality is variable so be aware of bitrates.  The format is useful for storing or collecting large amounts of audio files however it is just about phased out by AAC for music files and on average does not produce quite as profound a reproduction of sound as AAC or WAV files.

Added 1/11/10 9:00 PM

WMA (Windows Media Audio) Files-  WMA files are a low quality sound file used by Windows Media Player that are low quality and are usually used for lower quality sound effect files like the ones downloaded from microsoft.com.  I don't reccomend using this file format when creating movie projects because the high compression may cause undesirable results.

WAV- This is a very high audio quality format that I recommend using for your videos because of its crisp clarity and uncompressed quality sound.  I use this format for my sound effects to make sure they sound as real as possible.  The only downside to this file format is its very large file size its usually about 10 megabytes per minute.