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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

MJPEG is a format of multimedia data, which uses a frame-by-frame video track compression technology JPEG. This codec does not encode the difference (movement) between frames, whereby the image in some places does not turn out smooth enough. The main advantage of this format is the low requirements to hardware computational power, which, in turn, leads to a low level of compression and a larger resulting file size. It is actively used in web and IP-cameras.

Motion JPEG

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

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.

XviD

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

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

3GP is a multimedia container developed by Third Generation Partnership Project in 1998 for GSM-based (Global System for Mobile Communications) phones. The container requires little bandwidth, storage space and data usage that is why it is ideal for cell phones. It is a standard container for the files sent using MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service).

Third Generation Partnership Project

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

M4V is a video container that stores audio and video data used for iTunes files. Files of this type may be protected from illegal viewing and copying with Apple FairPlay DRM. In this case audio or video files should be bought in iTunes store. Not protected files can be viewed almost in any modern player because the format is based on MPEG-4 structure.

MPEG-4 Video

SWF is a format designed to store vector graphics and animation, it may contain sound, video, text and other data. Such files are widely used for creating animation, games and playing video and audio on web pages. It is possible to open SWF files with Adobe Flash Player or with a browser that has the flash plugin installed.

Small Web Format

This is a lossless-format (and encoding algorithm) for Apple platforms. M4A is widely used in iPod players and as a component in QuickTime media-players. The m4a codecs decoder is found in open sources - this allows third party users to open files in that format.

Compressed Audio File

This is a proprietary format developed by Microsoft. Users have noticed low error resilience: sometimes insignificant damage to the file can cause the file not to play. Besides this, the closed format hampers its proliferation outside of Windows platforms.

Windows Media Audio

MXF is a media container developed by SMPTE association for professional use. MXF implements subset of Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) data model and nowadays become a standard in professional non-linear video editing. MXF files can be compressed with almost any codec and easily converted to any popular video format. Worth noting that Sony's, Panasonic's and Canon's implementation of this format carries a lot of incompatibilities, that was a big flaw of this container. These issues were addressed in the 2009 version of the standard.

Material Exchange Format

OGV is a container that uses OGG open source format. OGG is unrestricted of software patents which was one of the main goals of its creation. OGV file extension is used to store video stream with or without audio which in turn may be compressed with the Opus, Vorbis, Theora or Speex algorithm. The format is used to play video content on web pages with the help of HTML5. OGV files can be played by wide variety of media players.

Ogg Video File

Is a standard for storing audio files in Apple operating systems. It was developed in 1988 based on the IFF format and is a lossless format - audio data is stored in an uncompressed form. In essence, AIFF is an analog to WAV for the Apple Macintosh platform.

Audio Interchange File Format

MP2 is a lossy audio compression format developed by MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group). It is widely used for audio broadcasting, while MP3 is more common for desktop and online programs. The format is supported only by some audio players, so you may need to convert it to a more popular one like MP3.

MPEG-1/2 Audio Layer 2

M2V is a format containing only video data, audio is stored in other accompanied file. The extension is widely used in DVDs and video compression systems. Actually it is an MPEG-2 video stream. M2V is also used in digital TV where serves as a standard that defines the structure of transport streams and data transmission methods.

MPEG-2 Video

VOB is a format for DVD files that are usually stored in the VIDEO_TS folder. VOB is based on MPEG-2 and it can contain video, audio, subtitles and other data. Each file should be less than 1 GB to be compatible with all operating systems, otherwise they will not be read.

DVD-Video Object

TS is an extension defined by MPEG-2 standard. It is usually used for storing video and audio on DVDs, for streaming media online and broadcasting. This media container consists of elementary streams stored in a way that allow quick playback resume and audio/video synchronization after an error in data transfer was encountered.

Transport Stream

Is a recording format, designed for use in movie theaters. Who is a direct competitor of Dolby Digital. It is used to accompany the film with the movie, as well as on optical video discs. It supports two modes of audio: 5.1 and 7.1, allows full bit rate in high end home theaters.

Digital Theater Systems

This format was originally created as an alternative to mp3. The idea was to achieve a small file size with better sound quality. The first versions weren’t quite successful, but with the development of AAC, it became possible to store sound with less loss of quality, and with the same file sizes as that of mp3.

Advanced Audio Coding

HEVC or h.265 is the most advanced codec for now because it has the lowest bitrate without losing the image quality. The codec has three main features that distinguishes it from others: parallel decoding, random access to images within the video stream and larger maximum block size. HEVC is aimed to offer the same level of video quality as AVC (h.264), but with improved compression, that is why a video file compressed with the codec will be twice smaller.

High Efficiency Video Coding

M2TS is a file name for BDAV (Blu-ray Disc Audio-Video) format developed by Japanese companies in 2006. It is used for high definition audio and video streaming on Blu-Ray Disc and AVCHD. M2TS can be opened by all popular media players such as Windows Media Player.

MPEG-2 Transport Stream

WavPack lossless audio compression. Note that, when converting .wav to this format and back again, the RIFF header is not necessarily preserved losslessly (though the audio is).

WavPack lossless audio compression

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

AVCHD is a video codec designed for recording high definition videos in 720p, 1080i and 1080p modes on such rewritable discs as Blu-Ray and AVCHD, hard disks and memory cards. The AVCHD standard implies using of AVC video compression format, AC3 audio codec and MTS or M2TS file extension. The main feature of the codec is high compression efficiency together with high image quality. But here comes the main flaw - the codec is really heavy for playback.

Advanced Video Coding High Definition

M4R - is a digital multimedia container format used to store audio in mono channel mode. This format is suitable for store ringtones and it is widely used by Apple iPhone for its ringtones. Needless to say that M4R and M4A formats shares many similar features.

MPEG 4 Ringtones Audio

Dolby Digital film format, developed for encoding audio tracks for films. It supports up to 6 audio channels: left, right, front, rear, upper and lower. Because of this, it allows you to store “3-dimensional” audio tracks. It’s widely used both in movie theaters and by the users themselves for storing audio tracks in film libraries at home.

AC3 Audio File

RMVB is a file format with a variable bitrate developed by RealNetworks. Actually it is an improved version of RM format. It gives greater bandwidth to videos that are difficult to compress. The extension keeps a high video definition. RMVB files are very popular in Asia and they are not supported by all popular players, so the easiest way to playback them is to convert them to another most common format.

RealMedia Variable Bitrate

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.

An SPX file is a Speex audio file saved within an Ogg Vorbis container. Speex is an open source patent-free audio format designed for speech compression. It supports variable bitrate (VBR) encoding and several features not found in other audio codecs. Some examples include embedded encoding, intensity stereo encoding, and voice activity detection.

Speex

Sonic Foundry’s 64-bit RIFF/WAV format.

Sonic Foundry’s 64-bit RIFF/WAV format

TTA is a simple and stable lossless audio data format for real-time compressing of digital music. Free and fully-functional for any use. It has a very simple structure. The TTA file header contains a unique format identifier, which is followed by meta-data block. Meta-data block contains minimal information which is needed for restoring the original stream (including number of channels, count of bits per sample, sample rate and overall number of samples in file, etc.) and ended by a 32-bit control sum. Following that header, we write one or more audio frames. Each frame is ended by a 32-bit control sum; a decoder may start decoding from any frame in the stream. The compressed samples of channels in a frame are located sequentially, as in a simple PCM data format.

True Audio

Sound Blaster VOC files. VOC files are multi-part and contain silence parts, looping, and different sample rates for different chunks. On input, the silence parts are filled out, loops are rejected, and sample data with a new sample rate is rejected. Silence with a different sample rate is generated appropriately. On output, silence is not detected, nor are impossible sample rates. SoX supports reading (but not writing) VOC files with multiple blocks, and files containing μ-law, A-law, and 2/3/4-bit ADPCM samples.

Sound Blaster VOC files

Opus is a lossy audio coding format developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force, designed to efficiently code speech and general audio in a single format, while remaining low-latency enough for real-time interactive communication and low-complexity enough for low-end ARM3 processors. Opus replaces both Vorbis and Speex for new applications, and several blind listening tests have ranked it higher-quality than any other standard audio format at any given bitrate until transparency is reached, including MP3, AAC, and HE-AAC.

Opus (audio format)

RM is a proprietary video container created by RealNetworks Inc. - the pioneers in streaming media over the internet market. This format supports DRM and was widely used to stream video and audio data online in the early 2000s with more than 80% of online streaming was in the RealMedia format. RM is supported by iPhone, Android, Windows and Mac. This container is often used by online radio stations. Nowadays it is still necessary to install Real Player plugin to be able to play RM files on such streaming websites.

RealMedia

F4V is a Flash Video format supported by Adobe Flash Player software and all browsers with flash video playback. The container uses boxes for data storage and it is compatible with h.264 video and AAC audio compression standards. F4V files provide better quality than FLV but need a newer version of Flash (9.0.115 or higher) and a faster processor.

OGA is an audio extension for OGG file and it was developed by Xiph.Org Foundation. OGG is an open container format designed for streaming and may contain independent video, text and audio files. To open OGA, you need either to install an appropriate software like Vorbis, or to convert the file to a more common format.

OGG Vorbis Audio

MTS is a high definition video extension developed by Sony and Panasonic companies for their high-definition consumer video cameras. Later these companies joined their forces in the Blu-ray Disc Association. AVCHD technology supports 720p and 1080i resolution. The format uses MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 codec for video compression and Dolby Digital AC-3 for audio compression. Blu-Ray players can playback MTS videos without compression.

An audio format from Apple that was developed to remove the limitations of AIFF and WAV formats. This is a container that can store sound encoded by various algorithms and track metadata. Its characteristic feature - the format doesn’t have limitations on file size and so this allows one to store infinitely long recordings.

Core Audio Format

WTV is a format for videos recorded by Windows Media Center where video is encoded by MPEG-2, MPEG-4 or h.264 and audio - by MPEG-1 Layer II or Dolby Digital AC-3. WTV file can contain video, audio, text and other data. The container replaced DVR-MS that was used by previous versions of the Windows program. WTV supports DRM that allows protection of the content by its owner.

Windows Recorded TV Show

RA is an audio format developed by RealNetworks to use in its RealPlayer for streaming audio which means that it can be played while downloading. It uses several audio codecs, they range from the ones for delivering high-fidelity sound to those for recording low bitrate audio data. Although, the format was pretty popular and was used by many radio station to stream online, now it is technically inferior to other newer formats.

Real Audio

MPG is an extension used for files compressed with MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 standard. MPG files can be played on Windows, Mac and any mobile devices. The first versions of this format were significantly limited, supporting low video resolution and limiting data bandwidth, but latest standard updates allows it to be used even in HDTV broadcasting.

Moving Picture Experts Group

This format was originally intended for voice compression and is able to change the bit rates of encoded audio data. AMR is actively used for encoding and decoding voice while its being transmitted over network channels. The format allows one to consider network capacity and adapt it to channel loads. Due to this, the voice quality is practically undiminished.

Conversions	Count
MP4 to MP3	14882
MP4 to WAV	2200
MP4 to AVI	1323
MP4 to DIVX	1165
MP4 to MOV	838
MP4 to WMV	482
MP4 to MPEG	416
MP4 to MJPEG	329
MP4 to OGG	219
MP4 to XVID	195
MP4 to FLAC	179
MP4 to MKV	170
MP4 to WEBM	99
MP4 to 3GP	80
MP4 to FLV	73
MP4 to M4V	66
MP4 to SWF	52
MP4 to M4A	52
MP4 to WMA	38
MP4 to MXF	36
MP4 to OGV	30
MP4 to AIFF	28
MP4 to MP2	27
MP4 to M2V	21
MP4 to VOB	20
MP4 to TS	20
MP4 to DTS	15
MP4 to AAC	15
MP4 to HEVC	13
MP4 to M2TS	11
MP4 to WV	9
MP4 to ASF	9
MP4 to AVCHD	7
MP4 to M4R	6
MP4 to AC3	6
MP4 to RMVB	5
MP4 to 3G2	5
MP4 to SPX	4
MP4 to W64	4
MP4 to TTA	4
MP4 to VOC	4
MP4 to OPUS	4
MP4 to RM	3
MP4 to F4V	3
MP4 to OGA	3
MP4 to MTS	3
MP4 to CAF	2
MP4 to WTV	1
MP4 to RA	1
MP4 to MPG	0
MP4 to AMR	0

Conversions	Count
MOV to MP4	1860
WEBM to MP4	1712
MKV to MP4	1046
WMV to MP4	194
AVI to MP4	131
FLV to MP4	119
ASF to MP4	4
DIVX to MP4	2
XVID to MP4	0
3G2 to MP4	0

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MPEG-4 Part 14

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