PDF stands for Portable Document Format. Adobe Systems developed the PDF standard and provides the premiere package for creating and manipulating PDF files, Adobe Acrobat. The process of converting to PDF takes instructions that would ordinarily be sent to a specific printer and prepares them to be viewed or printed on any computer with the free Acrobat Reader installed. The latest version of Acrobat Reader can be downloaded from: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Microsoft PowerPoint presentations may be included.

When deciding what image format to use, first weigh its original form to the output. Some formats are better for different data. If you intend that the image will or needs to be printed go for a format that produces a larger file size. The following are general format guidelines for images:

• pdf - good for line drawings with searchable text, e.g. maps.
• jpg - better for photographs
• gif - better for images other than photos, e.g. line drawings.
• tiff - for archival images these files are the largest;. more info is stored.
• png - created to replace gif format and is acceptable for photos also.
  
  General Suggestions
  For images that are only intended to be viewed on screen, a resolution of 72 or 75 dpi will result in a small file that can be easily downloaded. A resolution of 600 dpi is recommended for images that are intended to be printed.

The MPEG format is the oldest and most widely supported format for movies. There are a wide range of viewers available for all platforms. The MPEG format is most commonly used as an output format from UNIX utilities that generate video content.

The Quicktime format was originally more of a Macintosh-specific format. These days, support for Quicktime movies is good on both the Macintosh and Windows, but not as good on UNIX.

The AVI format is more of a Windows-specific format, and is not as well supported on other platforms.

Suggestions Regarding Video Content
Video is one of the most resource-intensive types of multimedia. Unfortunately, video content that is of even half broadcast quality is often too large to download from home. Consider including lower quality versions of video content in addition to high quality originals.

The default standard for Windows sound files, is also supported for most other platforms.

The AIFF format is a Macintosh-specific equivalent of the WAV format. It is not as well supported on all platforms as the WAV format.

MPEG-3 (or MP3) format eliminates sound data which is not as strongly perceived by the human ear and brain, and as such creates files of reasonable quality that are as much as 10 times smaller than the raw data itself. MP3 files are good for storing long passages of sound content where high quality is not required.

Suggestions Regarding Sound
The quality used to store sound in electronic format reflect the quality of the original recording source. There is very little reason to store low fidelity recordings of speech content in a very high-quality format, as the added file size would not result in any increase in quality. Conversely, high-fidelity recordings should be stored at high-quality.