Digital File Formats
PAGE CONTENTS 2 minute read.
Introduction
This page provides a general overview of the file types produced by the activities of the Digital Libraries Division, or accepted for inclusion in the UNT Libraries’ Digital Collections.
Preferred File Formats
These are commonly-accepted file formats for which we intend to maintain bitstream preservation in addition to preserving the functionality and content of the files.
| Mimetype | Common/Accepted Extensions | |
|---|---|---|
| Tagged Image File Format | image/tiff | .tif, .tiff |
| Joint Photographic Experts Group | image/jpeg | .jpg, .jpeg |
| Portable Document Format | application/pdf | |
| Text file | text/plain | .txt |
| Hypertext Markup Language file | text/html | .htm, .html |
| Audio Video Interleave file | application/x-troff-msvideo video/avi video/msvideo video/avs-video |
.avi |
| Quicktime | video/quicktime | .mov |
| Matroska | video/x-matroska | .mkv |
| Waveform Audio file | audio/wav audio/x-wav |
.wav, .wave |
| Audio Interchange File Format | audio/aiff audio/x-aiff |
.aif, .aiff |
| ARC | application/octet-stream | .arc, .arc.gz |
| Web ARChive file | application/warc | .warc, .warc.gz |
| Portable Network Graphics file | image/png | .png |
Recognized File Formats
These file formats are less preferred. Although we still preserve content and files at the bit level, functionality may be lost over time.
| Mimetype | Common/Accepted Extensions | |
|---|---|---|
| Motion Picture Entertainment Group | video/mpeg audio/mpeg |
.mpg, .mpeg |
| Flash Video Format | video/x-flv | .flv |
| MPEG Group4 | video/mp4 | .mp4, .m4v |
| Windows Media | video/x-ms-wmv | .wmv |
| MPEG Group4 | audio/mpeg3 audio/x-mpeg-3 video/mpeg video/x-mpeg |
.mp3 |
Standard Normalization Paths
For some born-digital file types, we create a set of derivatives to display the contents in a more standardized way. Although we retain all file types and derivatives, they may not all be visible or accessible from the public interface.
| Original File | Intermediary File(s) | Display/Public Files |
|---|---|---|
| Word document (.doc, .docx) | .jpg | |
| Portable Document Format (.pdf) | >> | .jpg |
| Powerpoint (.ppt, .pptx) | .jpg | |
| Spreadsheet (.xls, .xlsx) | >> | .csv |
| OpenDocument file: | ||
|
presentation |
.pdf, .ppt .pdf, .doc |
.jpg |