Data formats

Multimedia

Multimedia - General

Online publishing allows results, examples and information to be presented in a fundamentally different way to printed material. However, a wide range of formats is available for the integration of multimedia elements. The following overview aims to introduce a measure of order to this wealth of formats.

Multimedia components are basically document elements which go significantly beyond the possibilities offered by the printed form of a dissertation. What in each individual case can, or must, be incorporated differs greatly, depending on the subject matter.

Some university libraries have concrete guidelines stating which multimedia types and formats are accepted and how these should be linked to the document format used. Please consult your university library for further advice. A few general recommendations are given below. It should be noted that many formats require additional programs (plug-ins or media players) to display or play them. For some file formats, such programs are not available for all operating systems.

In general: the multimedia components should ideally be integrated in the document itself. However, this assumes that the multimedia files can be read by all browsers on all operating systems. Up to now, though, this has only been the case for JPEG, GIF (including GIF animated clips) and PNG graphics (not for PNG animated clips). All other multimedia components should therefore be connected to the document by means of a link and saved separately.