MP4 is an extension defined by MPEG-4 video standard and AAC audio standard. It is a container that supports all kinds of media such as video, audio, subtitles, 2D and 3D graphics. It is possible to open MP4 file with almost any player on Windows but on Mac you should use a plug-in or just convert the file to another format.

MPEG-4 Part 14

One of the most common audio formats. The format was developed by Microsoft (in collaboration with IBM) and usually stores uncompressed audio data with pulse-code modulation, but it can be used to store sound processed with other audio codecs.

Waveform Audio File Format

Is the most common format for storing audio. Almost any player on any platform can open mp3 files. The audio is compressed with loss of quality, but the loss is negligible for the typical user, and the file size is usually less than that of the original files.

MP3 Audio Format

MOV is a format developed by Apple and used for movie and other video data storage. It is compatible both with Windows and Mac. However, Windows Media Player can open only early versions of the file extension. If you have versions 2.0 and higher, you need Apple QuickTime Player or you can convert it to other format compatible with your player.

Apple QuickTime Movie

AVI is a multimedia container that is very popular among PC and Mac users. The format was developed by Microsoft in 1992. Usually AVI is used as a video format but unlike other formats of that time, AVI may contain both audio and video data compressed with a use of different combinations of codecs. More often such video codecs as DivX and XVID are used with .avi files. For audio playback such codecs as MP3, AC3 and PCM are used. It is possible to play AVI files with Windows Media Player or other similar programs.

Audio Video Interleave

MPEG was developed in 1993 as MPEG-1 and it was a very popular format for audio and video storage. Today it is the most compatible media format in the world. When the format first appeared, it was innovate and ahead of its time, provided relatively high quality files while reducing their size and made it easy to upload and download files by compressing them. These features allowed creating video CDs, digital TV and digital audio broadcasting. Due to its age, MPG is no longer covered by any patents, that is why both Mac and Windows applications along with many hardware support MPEG video and audio natively.

Moving Picture Experts Group Phase 1 (MPEG-1)

WMV is a codec usually used for video compression in ASF format. It is possible to open WMV files both on Mac and Windows with almost any player or convert the format to another one. WMV supports DRM protection that prevent users from copying information. It is the main reason why the format is widely used by companies that sell digital video and audio online. Also the format is well-known among users because WMV files are used on popular Xbox 360 devices. Low bitrate makes such files an ideal solution for HD DVD and Blu-ray discs.

Windows Media Video

This is open lossless codecs, developed under the Ogg project. Lately it’s become quite popular: many users wishing to store audio with original quality choose FLAC. This is partly in connection with the fact that codecs uses IDv1 and IDv3 tags - this allows a user to sort an audio collection according to one’s particular tastes, changing the original metadata of the tracks.

Free Lossless Audio Codec

MKV is an open source container that can contain media data compressed with a use of different codecs. It has a lot of advantages over the legacy AVI container: it can contain audio tracks and subtitles in different languages, that can be switched without stopping the playback, file seek and rewind are very fast. Also the format is easy to edit, that is why audio and video data can be extracted effortlessly.

Matroska Multimedia Container

DivX is a progressive implementation of the MPEG-4 format. It offers a significantly higher degree of video compression (comparing to another H.263 video codecs) and carries a number of revolutionary innovations of that time. To playback DivX files on PC, you can use many different programs because currently most video players support DivX even in FullHD resolution. For viewing such files in modern browsers the company developed DivX Web Player. However, the H.263 standard (which DivX implements) was created in 1996 and is currently considered obsolete. It was replaced by the H.264 and H.265 standards that are implemented in more progressive codecs such as HEVC and AV1.

DivX Networks

This format is free, which apparently is one of the reasons for its popularity. The used codecs supports variable bit rates (as a default), and .ogg files usually play back easily on all platforms. All things being equal, the sound quality exceeds that of mp3 somewhat.

Ogg Vorbis Compressed Audio File

WebM is an open media container compressed with VP8 video codec and Vorbis audio codec. WebM format has high video playback quality and data compression parameters.The format is widely used for adding media to web pages and it is supported by all modern web-browsers like Opera, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. The embedding of WebM videos to a site page realizes without delays and errors. WebM is meant to be an alternative to the h.264 standard. The copyright of the extension is held by Google.

WEB Media

FLV is a Flash Video container used on popular hosting sites that stores audio, video and other data. It often uses h.264 or h.263 codecs for video storage and MP3 for audio. There are a lot of programs for both Windows and Mac operating systems that are able to open .flv files.

Flash Video

3G2 is an audio and video format developed by Third Generation Partnership Project for CDMA-based (Code Division Multiple Access) phones. Actually it is an updated version of the 3GP file extension. Both formats are based on the ISO base media file format that facilitates presentation and interchange of the media. The 3G2 format is flexible and requires little storage space that is why it is mostly used by cell phones for saving files. However 3G2 movies can be played on computers but in some cases additional applications may be needed.

Third Generation Partnership Project

ASF is a media container used by Microsoft Windows Media Player. It was designed for streaming audio and video files online. The container determines the structure of the data stream but not how the data should be encoded. Usually the files encoded by Microsoft developers have the .wma or .wmv extensions, other files have .asf extension. Such files generally have MIME type that allows sending files via the internet. The main feature of the ASF is the ability to stream playback, that is the ability to play a video or audio directly at the time of downloading data over the network.

Advanced Systems Format

XviD is a codec based on the MPEG-4 standard. The codec distorts colors but it has high definition in dynamic scenes. XviD is constantly updating because it is an open source codec and anyone who is interested can participate in the development of the program. Using XviD may be illegal in some countries because the compression methods used in MPEG-4 are patented.

Conversions	Count
MP4 to WAV	745
MP4 to MP3	587
MP4 to MOV	219
MP4 to AVI	154
MP4 to MPEG	124
MP4 to WMV	107
MP4 to FLAC	76
MP4 to MKV	63
MP4 to DIVX	51
MP4 to OGG	47

Conversions	Count
MOV to MP4	196
WEBM to MP4	90
FLV to MP4	34
MKV to MP4	21
WMV to MP4	14
3G2 to MP4	0
ASF to MP4	0
AVI to MP4	0
DIVX to MP4	0
XVID to MP4	0

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MPEG-4 Part 14

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