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this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024
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Are those binary files by any chance?
I just mean like any file (pdf, jpeg, mp4, mp3, exe—
mp4/mp3 most famously for me
I find it so damn cool and incredible I can record something/anything right now and open the audio in a text file and its all right there—albeit in an incomprehensible format but there altogether.
Its like a thinking rock etching sound into stone
If you're on Linux, you can convert that to something more human readable by piping it to base64. It works with any file, but I'll use an image here:
cat image.webp | base64Which yields:
Copy that into a text file and pass it to base64 with the decode flag, and you'll get the original binary:
cat data.txt | base64 -d > data.binInspect it to see what kind of file it is:
file data.bin->data.bin: RIFF (little-endian) data, Web/P imageRename it so you can just double-click it to open it:
mv data.bin data.webpEnjoy the surprise.
You can also print files like that, scan them using OCR, and then restore them. A very inefficient way to do backups, but it works.
How is it representing it tho? Like does it have woven in there an array of hexcode colors for every microscopic pixel that makea up the picture.
Are images and audio files just arrays of frames which are arrays of pixels and sound units?
It just converts the raw binary data into character encoding, so it doesn't matter what the source is (image, video, database file, etc). The source binary data is taken 6 bits at a time, then this group of 6 bits is mapped to one of 64 unique characters.
The decoding process is just the reverse of that: mapping the data back to binary form.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base64
the answer to your how question is as needed.
some image and audio formats (especially older ones) are like that, yes. others use compression or other techniques to suit their need. like a sound can be a raw recording sample. or a sound can be described with Attack/Decay/Sustain/Release, along with octave and note etc. so a MIDI file is an audio file format without samples.
i once created an image format to be used for spiraling out images, instead of pixel arrays they were concentric circles of pixels that i could easily offset.
You can use a hex editor to view those files and even change them in some cases.
Something like this https://github.com/WerWolv/ImHex