Portable document format was designed to preserve a document's page layout, regardless of the computer platform being used. To view or download these files you need Adobe® Acrobat® Reader® which can be downloaded for free from the Adobe site. Note that unless you acquire special software, pdf documents cannot be modified even if you download them.
We recommend downloading MS Word files and opening them using MS Word. Word files can also be viewed using special viewers such as Quick View Plus, but page layout and paragraph numbering may differ from the original document.
Some older files on the NIC website are available in WordPerfect 5.1/5.2 format. Note that most of these are also available in pdf format. We recommend downloading WordPerfect files and opening them using MS Word. WordPerfect files can also be viewed using special viewers such as Quick View Plus, but page layout and paragraph numbering may differ from the original document.
Executable or .exe files perform an action when run locally on your computer once they have been downloaded and saved on your hard disk. For example, an .exe file might decompress itself to produce a number of documents, or it might install software when you run it by double-clicking. We recommend that you move each downloaded .exe file into its own folder before running it. Note that .exe files from the NIC site will run only on MS Windows-based machines.
Zip is a compression format used to reduce downloading times. It also allows multiple file to be downloaded as one file and then extracted into a folder on your computer. “Zipped” files can be decompressed using software freely available for download. Most modern computers will also allow you to simply double-click on the downloaded file to open it. To "unzip" a .zip file, right-click on the file and choose and option similar to "extract". Not all computers and softare programs use the same options so you may need to search the Internet for more instructions if you are having trouble opening a .zip file.
Microsoft Access is a database format which will allow you to sort and modify data. You need a full version of MS Access software to open files in this formt. In some cases (e.g. schedules of concessions and commitments on goods) data is provided in this format on the NIC website.
Microsoft Excel is spreadsheet software, designed to manipulate and view numerical data such as statistics. We recommend downloading MS Excel files and opening them using MS Excel or other spreadsheet software. Excel files can also be viewed in your browser window using a special viewer such as QuickView, but page layout may differ from the original document.
In order to cater for the wide range of user needs, videos are made available on the NIC website in a number of formats. For broadcasts and large streaming videos, you will be provided a link that should open the default video player for your computer. If this does not happen, please make sure that you have the latest version of your video player installed. By default, most computers come with a video player but not all video players play all types of videos. VLC Viewer is a free downloadable video player that will play any video found on the NIC website: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
This format requires Adobe Flash player 7 or later. By default, videos on the NIC website will play in a Flash player using progressive download. This means if your connection is not fast enough to watch in “real time” you can pause the video and return to it after a sufficient “buffer” has been downloaded. The video should then play smoothly. The default viewer does not allow you to download the full video to save it locally for offline playback. If you wish to do so, three alternative formats are available, listed below. Links for these formats are displayed below the Flash player. Right-click the appropriate link, and choose “Save target as” or “Save link as” depending on your browser.
Some of the links on our website link to webpages. Web browsers open and display these pages by default so no additional software should be needed to display these types of files. We recommend using the most recent version of your browser. Older browsers may not have the same capability of newer browsers and you may miss out on functionality that could enhance your experience on the NIC website.
MP4 requires Flash Player 9 or more recent, available here: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/ . Alternatively, MP4 files can be viewed with the free VLC viewer available from http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ Video is encoded at 640x480 pixels using the H264 codec. This is fairly high quality, but not broadcast quality.
This is the video format used by default on the NIC Website. WMV requires Windows Media Player, available for free here http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/. WMV files on the NIC website are encoded at lower quality than other file types. Macintosh users can view WMV files using Flip4Mac, then opened using QuickTime.
MPEG2 files on the NIC website are used for broadcast-quality video and file sizes can be extremely large. MPEG files can be viewed using Windows Media Player on Windows, or QuickTime on the Mac. This format is best suited to video professionals needing to manipulate the video file.