Containers Vs Codecs CODEC – Compressor-Decompressor Method for encoding (wrapping) and decoding (unwrapping) compressed data in video/audio/stills. Encoding for transport and storage. Decoding for viewing or transcoding (re-wrapping) Raw Video and Audio or Uncompressed video/audio in huge! (1080i high- definition video recorded at 60 frames per second eats up 410 gigabytes per hour of video) CONTAINERS - (Blackboxes) Once the media data is compressed into suitable formats and reasonable sizes, it needs to be packaged, transported, and presented. That's the purpose of container formats--to be discrete "black boxes" for holding a variety of media formats. Good container formats can handle files compressed with a variety of different codecs. LIST OF CONTAINER FORMATS 3GP: (3GPP file format) is a multimedia container format defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for 3G UMTS multimedia services. It is used on 3G mobile phones but can also be played on some 2G and 4G phones. 3G2: (3GPP2 file format) is a multimedia container format defined by the 3GPP2 for 3G CDMA2000 multimedia services. It is very similar to the 3GP file format, but has some extensions and limitations in comparison to 3GP. Advanced Systems Format: ASF is a Microsoft-based container format. You'll see various file extensions for ASF files, including .asf, .wma, and .wmv. Note that a file with a .wmv extension is probably compressed with Microsoft's WMV (Windows Media Video) codec, but the file itself is an ASF container file. ASF files can, in theory, contain video and audio files compressed with any codec. In practice, it's playback that can become a problem, particularly with video compressed with H.264 codecs. If you're planning on remaining within the Microsoft universe, ASF is fine, but you might have problems with non-Microsoft media. Audio Video Interleave : AVI is an older Microsoft container format. It's still fairly common, but you probably won't want to use it with new projects. QuickTime: MOV QuickTime is Apple's own container format. QuickTime sometimes gets criticized because codec support (both audio and video) is limited to whatever Apple supports. This is true, but QuickTime supports a large array of codecs for audio and video. Apple is a strong proponent of H.264, so QuickTime files can contain H.264-encoded video. MP4: MPEG 4 People sometimes confuse MP4 files with QuickTime, but they're actually different standards. MP4 is another container format developed by the Motion Pictures Expert Group, and is more technically known as MPEG-4 Part 14. Video inside MP4 files are encoded with H.264, while audio is usually encoded with AAC, but other audio standards can also be used. MPEG and BDAV MPEG-2 Transport Streams: These are the container formats used in DVDs and Blu-ray discs, respectively. The VOB (Video Objects) container file format is a subset of the MPEG transport stream, and is used specifically in DVD video creation. (VOBs can also hold other types of data, but that's beyond what we're discussing here.) MPEG-2 Transport Streams, as the name suggests, uses video compressed with MPEG-2 Part 2 encoders, but it's actually not limited to MPEG-2. MPEG-2 TS data can also be compressed with H.264 and VC-1, since those are also defined as part of the Blu-ray standard. Audio files can be Dolby Digital (AC3) files, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby Lossless, DTS, DTS HD, and Linear PCM (uncompressed) multichannel audio data. AVCHD: This is the standard container used by many camcorders. Video captured with these devices is compressed with the H.264 AVC codec. Audio is encoded as Dolby Digital (AC3) or uncompressed linear PCM. FlasH: FLV Adobe's own container format is Flash, which supports a variety of codecs. More recent Flash video is encoded with H.264 video and AAC audio codecs, but don't expect all Flash sites to use only those codecs, particularly if the video was created and encoded in years past. Matroska Multimedia Container : MKV is an open standard free container format, a file format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture, or subtitle tracks in one file.It is intended to serve as a universal format for storing common multimedia content, like movies or TV shows. Matroska is similar in concept to other containers like AVI, MP4, or Advanced Systems Format (ASF), but is entirely open in specification, with implementations consisting mostly of open source software. Matroska file extensions are .MKV for video (with subtitles and audio), .MK3D for stereoscopic video, .MKA for audio-only files, and .MKS for subtitles only. "Matroska" is derived from Matryoshka (Russian: матрёшка [mɐˈtrʲɵʂkə]), which refers to the hollow, wooden, "Russian doll", or Matryoshka doll, that opens to expose another doll that in turn opens to expose another doll, and so on. The logo uses "Matroška", with the caron over the "s", as the letter š represents the "sh" sound (as in "Matryoshka") in the Slavic languages in which it is used. Material eXchange Format (MXF) is a container format for professional digital video and audio media defined by a set of SMPTE standards. MXF is a "container" or "wrapper" format which supports a number of different streams of coded "essence", encoded in any of a variety of video and audio compression formats, together with a metadata wrapper which describes the material contained within the MXF file. MXF has been designed to address a number of problems with non-professional formats. MXF has full timecode and metadata support, and is intended as a platform-agnostic stable standard for future professional video and audio applications. MXF was developed to carry a subset of the Advanced Authoring Format (AAF) data model, under a policy known as the Zero Divergence Directive (ZDD). This theoretically enables MXF/AAF workflows between non-linear editing (NLE) systems using AAF and cameras, servers, and other devices using MXF. Ogg: Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The creators of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents[2] and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high quality digital multimedia. "Ogg" is derived from "ogging", jargon from the computer game Netrek: 3.3 Ogging: This is the art of killing a carrier, or potential carrier, by a suicide run. The Ogg container format can multiplex a number of independent streams for audio, video, text (such as subtitles), and metadata. In the Ogg multimedia framework, Theora provides a lossy video layer. The audio layer is most commonly provided by the music-oriented Vorbis format but other codec options include the compression codec Opus, the lossless audio compression codec FLAC, and OggPCM. RealMedia Variable Bitrate: (RMVB) is a variable bitrate extension of the RealMedia multimedia digital container format developed by RealNetworks. As opposed to the more common RealMedia container, which holds streaming media encoded at a constant bitrate (CBR), RMVB is typically used for multimedia content stored locally. Files using this format have the file extension ".rmvb". VOB (Video Object) is the container format in DVD-Video media. VOB can contain digital video, digital audio, subtitles, DVD menus and navigation contents multiplexed together into a stream form. Files in VOB format may be encrypted. WebM is a video file format.[3] It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML5 video tag. It has a sister project WebP for images. The development of the format is sponsored by Google, and the corresponding software is distributed under a BSD license. The WebM container is based on a profile of Matroska.[2][4][5] WebM initially supported VP8 video and Vorbis audio streams. In 2013 it was updated to accommodate VP9 video and Opus audio.[6] .