Usually, multimedia files are maintained in one of the formats described in the following table.
Format | Corresponding filename extension |
Digital-video | .AVI |
Waveform-audio | .WAV |
Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) | .MID |
Multimedia files are stored on a compact disc, a local hard disk drive, a network file server, or another storage medium. The playback quality is constrained by the amount of data that the storage medium can continuously supply to the file system.
A multimedia data stream (such as an .AVI file) generally contains multiple components, such as digital-video data, audio data, text, and perhaps other data (such as hot-spot information, additional audio tracks, and so on). As multimedia information is read from the CD-ROM drive, the multimedia subsystem determines what the data stream contains, and then it separates and routes the data accordingly.
To get the best possible performance from double-speed and faster CD-ROM drives, Windows 95 includes a new, 32-bit, CD-ROM file system (CDFS) for reading files from CD-ROM drives as quickly and efficiently as possible. For more information about the CDFS, see Chapter 17, "Performance Tuning" and Chapter 31, "Windows 95 Architecture."
CDFS replaces most Windows version 3.1 MSCDEX drivers.