I've posted below in this thread some more practical considerations when requesting and handling content assets destined for use on web sites. I've broken this down into 4 separate posts on text, imagery, audio and video.

Most common source format: Hard copy (photos, brochures, printed material), JPEG, Photoshop document (PSD), TIFF, BMP, Adobe llustrator (AI), Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), PICT, Targa (TGA)

Web format it will probably become: JPEG, GIF, Flash, Shockwave

Considerations for imagery

- As a rule of thumb you want to have as high resolution images as possible to start with. This allows you to control the final image quality better.

- Many designers use Macs for creating graphics. If you are using a PC and are to receive Mac files, ask the designers to add the PC file extension to the Mac file names or at least let you know what format the files are in. Otherwise you will spend a while guessing the file format.

- If you receive a Quark document make sure you ask for the high resolution images the document will refer to separately as well as the thumbnails that the .qxd file contains.

- Monitors display images at 72 dpi (dots per inch). Source imagery can be at a much higher resolution (e.g. 300) but should ultimately be saved down to 72 dpi

- Use your Print Screen function to capture screen images (e.g. another site’s homepage) before pasting them into a document or graphics editor. If the image is then shrunk down or used as part of a background the quality is just about good enough to get away with.

- If you are in any doubt that the client can supply the images digitally as you require, it is often easier to do all the scanning etc. yourself from hard copies though you will need to allow for this work in the budget.

- Often you will be working with a client’s print design agency who may not be eager to co-operate: they may not be paid for their work of they may feel that they should be doing the work in the first place. Make sure the client gets you the authority to obtain what you need.

- Try and get logos as vector graphics rather than bitmaps e.g. as an Adobe Illustrator file. This means that you can scale the logo as you wish without losing quality. Any line art should also be delivered in vector format.

- If you are going to be using a vector format such as Flash, try and make sure that the graphics that form the Flash movie are vector graphics. Flash can work with bitmap images but the quality will drop when the image scales and the file size will be significantly larger.

- If the image has larger areas of flat color, then the GIF format is the best compression method to use. For photographs or other images with wide gradients of tone or color, use the JPEG format.

- GIFs support transparency, JPEGs don’t. GIFs are only 8-bit images (256 colors); JPEGs are 24-bit (up to 16 million colors); with JPEGs you can specify the level of compression, you cannot with GIFs. GIFs can be indexed against a particular color palette.

Most common source format: Video tape ((Digital) Betacam, SVHS, VHS, Hi-8, Secam, DVCAM, DVCPro etc.), AVI, MPEG, MOV, QuickTime

Web format it will probably become: RealVideo, Netshow, AVI, MOV, QuickTime

Considerations for Video

- As with audio and imagery, if you put bad quality in, you will get bad quality out, so try and get good quality video source material.

- Many of the same considerations for video are the same as those for audio. See above for streaming, copyrights, playback software and hardware.

- Video is even more expensive to create and edit than audio. The file sizes are vastly larger making it, on the surface, not ideal for web delivery unless you can be sure of a broadband connection.

- Because of current typical internet connection speeds, video is less reliable in quality of playback when streaming over the web than audio.

- Broadband internet will mean video becomes a much more important and integral part of the web experience, so learn about it now if you can.

- Be aware of the different video standards across the world. The UK and US use VHS and Betacam as fairly standard video formats but the UK uses PAL whereas the US has NTSC, each with a different frame rate. France and other European countries use Secam. This means that your machines may not be able to properly play back video content that comes from abroad or only exists in another standard.

- You can digitize video in order to take screen grabs for use as imagery on the site. Try and digitize the source material at as high a rate as possible (though it really eats up hard disk space) so that you screen grab image will be as good as it can be for further editing. NB the resolution of TV images is lower than for a computer monitor e.g. PAL is 768X576 compared to a typical 800X600 for a computer screen. The scan rate for the lines that make up a TV picture is also considerable lower than for a monitor. The quality of a video screen grab will not be that good. It will, however, be sufficient if the image is not primary in the design.

- There is not enough space here to go into the details of webcasting (broadcasting video and audio over the net) but you will need specialist skills to do this. These include a knowledge of AV capture, editing, encoding and transmission with expertise in the serving of webcast material, including server side software options, pricing models, bandwidth and accessibility issues.