If you've recently found yourself having trouble recapturing that sense of wonder which, in years past, caused people to buy useless light pens and cumbersome three-shot video digitisers, the QuickCam USB is a fine way to find it again. Common Intermediate Format is a standard format for videoconferencing. It specifies 30 frame per second video, with each frame 352 by 288 pixels. QCIF, or Quarter CIF, transfers one fourth as much data and is thus slim enough to work over regular modems. In the narrow definition used here, codecs are just software, and they're used for compressing and decompressing video and audio files.
Software can give the impression of much higher resolution than the hardware actually delivers.
The smiley face on the left is an 11 by 11 pixel image, blown up to 55 by 55. The image on the right is an interpolated 55 by 55 version, in which the darkness of each pixel is determined by means of a clever algorithm that works from the darkness of its neighbours. Messaging Application Programming Interface, the Microsoft Windows e-mail application intercommunication standard. Original Equipment Manufacturer. In the computer industry, OEMs are not, in fact, the people who make the chips and the boards - they're the people who package the parts up into completed, customised computers.