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== Controversies ==
* In line with their policy of using .RIFF for all Windows "multimedia" files, Microsoft introduced a new variant on the existing [[MIDI file]] format used for storing song information to be played on electronic musical instruments. Microsoft's "new" MIDI
* When dealing with large video files, expanding or contracting the INFO chunk can result in the entire file (which might be several gigabyes in size) having to be rewritten, which is a disk-intensive process. The correct workaround to this problem is to "pad out" the INFO chunk using dummy data (using a "dummy chunk" or "pad chunk") when a large file is created, so that later editing can expand or contract the "dummy" field to keep the total size of the INFO chunk constant: an intelligently-written piece of software can then overwrite just the INFO chunk when header data is changed, and does not have to modify or move the main body of the file. However, since this method requires a certain amount of additional work on the part of the software programmer, and since the full RIFF specifications were scattered amongst Microsoft's documentation, some programmers believed that it was legal (and simpler) to place the INFO chunk at the ''end'' of a RIFF file, and some faulty documentation began to circulate recommending this practice. Misplacing the INFO chunk in this way means that the data will not be read by all media programs, and also means that there is a risk that the entire INFO chunk may be accidentally discarded or overwritten by software that strictly adheres to the official file specification.
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