A video file format is a type of file format for storing digital video data on a computer system. Video is almost always stored using

lossy compression In information technology, lossy compression or irreversible compression is the class of data compression methods that uses inexact approximations and partial data discarding to represent the content. These techniques are used to reduce data size ...

to reduce the file size. A video file normally consists of a

container A container is any receptacle or enclosure for holding a product used in storage, packaging, and transportation, including shipping. Things kept inside of a container are protected on several sides by being inside of its structure. The term ...

(e.g. in the

Matroska Matroska is a project to create a container format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture, or subtitle tracks in one file. The Matroska Multimedia Container is similar in concept to other containers like AVI, MP4, or Advanc ...

format) containing visual (video without audio) data in a

video coding format A video coding format (or sometimes video compression format) is a content representation format for storage or transmission of digital video content (such as in a data file or bitstream). It typically uses a standardized video compression algori ...

(e.g.

VP9 VP9 is an open and royalty-free video coding format developed by Google. VP9 is the successor to VP8 and competes mainly with MPEG's High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265). At first, VP9 was mainly used on Google's video platform YouTube. ...

) alongside audio data in an

audio coding format An audio coding format (or sometimes audio compression format) is a content representation format for storage or transmission of digital audio (such as in digital television, digital radio and in audio and video files). Examples of audio coding ...

(e.g.

Opus ''Opus'' (pl. ''opera'') is a Latin word meaning "work". Italian equivalents are ''opera'' (singular) and ''opere'' (pl.). Opus or OPUS may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Opus number, (abbr. Op.) specifying order of (usually) publicatio ...

). The container can also contain synchronization information, subtitles, and metadata such as title. A standardized (or in some cases

de facto standard A ''de facto'' standard is a custom or convention that has achieved a dominant position by public acceptance or market forces (for example, by early entrance to the market). is a Latin phrase (literally " in fact"), here meaning "in practice b ...

) video file type such as

.webm WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML5 video and the HTML5 audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponsored ...

is a

profile Profile or profiles may refer to: Art, entertainment and media Music * ''Profile'' (Jan Akkerman album), 1973 * ''Profile'' (Githead album), 2005 * ''Profile'' (Pat Donohue album), 2005 * ''Profile'' (Duke Pearson album), 1959 * '' ''Profi ...

specified by a restriction on which container format and which video and audio compression formats are allowed. The coded video and audio inside a video file container (i.e. not headers, footers, and metadata) is called the

essence Essence ( la, essentia) is a polysemic term, used in philosophy and theology as a designation for the property or set of properties that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, and without which it ...

. A program (or hardware) which can decode compressed video or audio is called a

codec A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder on a signal or ...

; playing or encoding a video file will sometimes require the user to install a codec library corresponding to the type of video and audio coding used in the file. Good design normally dictates that a

file extension A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically d ...

enables the user to derive which program will open the file from the file extension. That is the case with some video file formats, such as WebM (.webm), Windows Media Video (.wmv), Flash Video (.flv), and Ogg Video (.ogv), each of which can only contain a few well-defined subtypes of video and audio coding formats, making it relatively easy to know which codec will play the file. In contrast to that, some very general-purpose container types like AVI (.avi) and QuickTime (.mov) can contain video and audio in almost any format, and have file extensions named after the container type, making it very hard for the end user to use the file extension to derive which codec or program to use to play the files. The

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

FFmpeg FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing of vid ...

project's libraries have very wide support for encoding and decoding video file formats. For example, Google uses ffmpeg to support a wide range of upload video formats for YouTube. One widely used media player using the ffmpeg libraries is the free software

VLC media player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client and commonly known as simply VLC) is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desk ...

, which can play most video files that end users will encounter.

List of video file formats

{, class="wikitable sortable" , - ! Name ! File extension(s) ! Container format ! Video coding format(s) ! Audio coding format(s) ! Notes , -- ,

WebM WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML5 video and the HTML5 audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponsored ...

, .webm ,

VP8 VP8 is an open and royalty-free video compression format released by On2 Technologies in 2008. Initially released as a proprietary successor to On2's previous VP7 format, VP8 was released as an open and royalty-free format in May 2010 after Goo ...

AV1 AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) is an open, royalty-free video coding format initially designed for video transmissions over the Internet. It was developed as a successor to VP9 by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), a consortium founded in 2015 th ...

Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conj ...

, Royalty-free format created for

HTML5 video The HTML5 specification introduced the video element for the purpose of playing videos, partially replacing the object element. HTML5 video is intended by its creators to become the new standard way to show video on the web, instead of the previo ...

. , -- ,

, .mkv ,

, any , any , , -- ,

Flash Video Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content (e.g., TV shows, movies, etc.) over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There ar ...

(FLV) , .flv , FLV ,

VP6 On2 TrueMotion VP6 is a proprietary lossy video compression format and video codec. It is an incarnation of the TrueMotion video codec, a series of video codecs developed by On2 Technologies. This codec is commonly used by Adobe Flash, Flash Vi ...

Sorenson Spark Sorenson Media was an American software company specializing in video encoding technology. Established in December 1995 as Sorenson Vision, the company developed technology which was licensed and ultimately acquired from Utah State University. T ...

, Screen video, Screen video 2,

H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

ADPCM Adaptive differential pulse-code modulation (ADPCM) is a variant of differential pulse-code modulation (DPCM) that varies the size of the quantization step, to allow further reduction of the required data bandwidth for a given signal-to-noise ratio ...

, Nellymoser,

Speex Speex is an audio compression codec specifically tuned for the reproduction of human speech and also a free software speech codec that may be used on VoIP applications and podcasts. It is based on the CELP speech coding algorithm.Xiph.OrIntro ...

, AAC , Use of the H.264 and AAC compression formats in the FLV file format has some limitations and authors of Flash Player strongly encourage everyone to embrace the new standard F4V file formatKaourantin.net (31 October 2007) Tinic Ur
New File Extensions and MIME Types
, Retrieved on 2009-08-03 de facto standard for web-based streaming video (over RTMP). , -- , F4V , .flv ,

MPEG-4 Part 12 The ISO base media file format (ISOBMFF) is a container file format that defines a general structure for files that contain time-based multimedia data such as video and audio. It is standardized in ISO/IEC 14496-12, a.k.a. MPEG-4 Part 12, and wa ...

, AAC , Replacement for FLV. , -- , Vob , .vob , VOB , H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2 or

MPEG-1 Part 2 MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to about 1.5 Mbit/s (26:1 and 6:1 compression ratios respectively) without excessive quality loss, making ...

, PCM, DTS,

MPEG-1 MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to about 1.5 Mbit/s (26:1 and 6:1 compression ratios respectively) without excessive quality loss, making ...

, Audio Layer II (MP2), or Dolby Digital (AC-3) , Files in VOB format have .vob filename extension and are typically stored in the VIDEO_TS folder at the root of a

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

. The VOB format is based on the

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by ISO and IEC that sets standards for media coding, including compression coding of audio, video, graphics, and genomic data; and transmission and f ...

program stream format. , -- ,

Ogg Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The authors of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high-quality di ...

Video , .ogv, .ogg ,

Theora Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg contai ...

Dirac Distributed Research using Advanced Computing (DiRAC) is an integrated supercomputing facility used for research in particle physics, astronomy and cosmology in the United Kingdom. DiRAC makes use of multi-core processors and provides a variety o ...

, FLAC , , -- ,

, .drc , ? ,

, ? , , -- , GIF , .gif , N/A , N/A , none , Simple animation, inefficient compression, no sound, widely supported , -- , Video alternative to GIF , .gifv , HTML , any , none , Not standardized, and not a real video file in the classical meaning since it merely references the real video file (e.g. a .webm file), which has to exist separately elsewhere. A .gifv "file" is simply a HTML webpage which includes a

tag, where the video has no sound. As there were large communities online which create art using the medium of short soundless videos in GIF format, GIFV was created as a functionally similar replacement with vastly smaller filesizes than the inefficient GIF format. , -- ,

Multiple-image Network Graphics Multiple-image Network Graphics (MNG) is a graphics file format, published in 2001, for animated images. Its specification is publicly documented and there are free software reference implementations available. MNG is closely related to the ...

, .mng , N/A , N/A , none , Inefficient, not widely used. , -- , AVI , .avi , AVI , any , any , Uses

RIFF A riff is a repeated chord progression or refrain in music (also known as an ostinato figure in classical music); it is a pattern, or melody, often played by the rhythm section instruments or solo instrument, that forms the basis or acc ...

, - , MPEG Transport Stream , .MTS, .M2TS, .TS , AVCHD , AVCHD (MPEG-4 / H.264 ) , Dolby AC-3 or uncompressed linear PCM , The standard video format used by many Sony and Panasonic HD camcorders. It is also used for storing high definition video on Blu-ray discs. , -- ,

QuickTime File Format QuickTime File Format (QTFF) is a computer file format used natively by the QuickTime framework. Design The format specifies a multimedia container file that contains one or more tracks, each of which stores a particular type of data: audio, ...

, .mov, .qt , QuickTime , many , AAC,

, others , , -- ,

Windows Media Video Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: The original video compression technology ...

, .wmv ,

ASF ASF may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Alabama Shakespeare Festival, a drama festival * ''Asimov's Science Fiction'', a U.S.-based English-language science fiction magazine containing SF stories Science and technology Biological * A ...

, Windows Media Video, Windows Media Video Screen, Windows Media Video Image , Windows Media Audio, Sipro ACELP.net , , -- , Raw video format , .yuv , Further documentation needed , Doesn't apply , Doesn't apply , Supports all resolutions, sampling structures, and frame rates , -- , RealMedia (RM) , .rm , RealMedia , RealVideo ,

RealAudio RealAudio, or also spelled as Real Audio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks and first released in April 1995. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fi ...

, Made for

RealPlayer RealPlayer, formerly RealAudio Player, RealOne Player and RealPlayer G2, is a cross-platform media player app, developed by RealNetworks. The media player is compatible with numerous container file formats of the multimedia realm, including MP3 ...

, -- ,

RealMedia Variable Bitrate 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 b ...

(RMVB) , .rmvb ,

, RealVideo ,

, Made for

, -- , VivoActive (VIV) , .viv , VIV , based upon H.263 video , G.723 ADPCM audio (not the G.723.1 speech codec) , Made for VivoActive Player , -- , Advanced Systems Format (ASF) , .asf ,

, any , any , , -- , AMV video format , .amv , Modified version of AVI , Variant of

Motion JPEG Motion JPEG (M-JPEG or MJPEG) is a video compression format in which each video frame or interlaced field of a digital video sequence is compressed separately as a JPEG image. Originally developed for multimedia PC applications, Motion JPEG ...

, Variant of IMA, ADPCM , Proprietary video file format produced for

MP4 player A portable media player (PMP) (also including the related digital audio player (DAP)) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored o ...

s and S1 MP3 players with video playback , -- ,

MPEG-4 Part 14 MPEG-4 Part 14 or MP4 is a digital multimedia container format most commonly used to store video and audio, but it can also be used to store other data such as subtitles and still images. Like most modern container formats, it allows streaming ...

(MP4) , .mp4, .m4p (with DRM), .m4v ,

H.265 H is the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet. H may also refer to: Musical symbols * H number, Harry Halbreich reference mechanism for music by Honegger and Martinů * H, B (musical note) * H, B major People * H. (noble) (died after 12 ...

MPEG-4 Part 2 MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-4 Visual (formally ISO/ IEC 14496-2) is a video compression format developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). It belongs to the MPEG-4 ISO/IEC standards. It uses block-wise motion compensation and a discrete cosine ...

, MPEG-2,

Advanced Audio Coding Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is an audio coding standard for lossy digital audio compression. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves higher sound quality than MP3 encoders at the same bit rate. AAC has been stan ...

, others , , -- ,

, .mpg, .mp2, .mpeg, .mpe, .mpv , MPEG-1 part 1 , MPEG-1 part 2 , MPEG-1 Audio Layer I, MPEG-1 Audio Layer I, MPEG-1 Audio Layer III (

) , Old, but very widely used due to installed base. , -- , MPEG-2 – Video , .mpg, .mpeg, .m2v , ? , H.262 , AAC,

, MPEG-2 Part 3, others , , -- , M4V , .m4v ,

, AAC, Dolby Digital , Developed by Apple, used in iTunes. Very similar to MP4 format, but may optionally have DRM. , -- , SVI , .svi , MPEG-4 utilising a special header , ? , ? , Samsung video format for portable players , -- , 3GPP , .3gp ,

, H.263,

AMR-NB The Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR, AMR-NB or GSM-AMR) audio codec is an audio compression format optimized for speech coding. AMR speech codec consists of a multi-rate narrowband speech codec that encodes narrowband (200–3400 Hz) signals at var ...

AMR-WB Adaptive Multi-Rate Wideband (AMR-WB) is a patented wideband speech audio coding standard developed based on Adaptive Multi-Rate encoding, using a similar methodology to algebraic code-excited linear prediction (ACELP). AMR-WB provides improved ...

, AMR-WB+,

AAC-LC Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is an audio coding standard for lossy digital audio compression. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves higher sound quality than MP3 encoders at the same bit rate. AAC has been stand ...

, HE-AAC v1 or Enhanced aacPlus (HE-AAC v2) , Common video format for

cell phones A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...

, -- ,

3GPP2 The 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) is a collaboration between telecommunications associations to make a globally applicable third generation ( 3G) mobile phone system specification within the scope of the ITU's IMT-2000 project. In ...

, .3g2 ,

, H.263,

, AMR-WB+,

, HE-AAC v1 or Enhanced aacPlus (HE-AAC v2),

EVRC Enhanced Variable Rate CODEC (EVRC) is a speech codec used in CDMA networks. It was developed in 1995 to replace the QCELP vocoder which used more bandwidth on the carrier's network, thus EVRC's primary goal was to offer the mobile carriers more cap ...

, SMV or

VMR-WB Variable-Rate Multimode Wideband (VMR-WB) is a source-controlled variable-rate multimode codec designed for robust encoding/decoding of wideband/narrowband speech. The operation of VMR-WB is controlled by speech signal characteristics (i.e., source ...

, Common video format for

, -- ,

Material Exchange Format Material Exchange Format (MXF) is a container format for professional digital video and audio media defined by a set of SMPTE standards. A typical example of its use is for delivering advertisements to TV stations and tapeless archiving of broadc ...

(MXF) , .mxf , MXF , ? , ? , , -- , ROQ , .roq , ? , ? , ? , used by Quake 3{{Cite web, url=http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=RoQ, title=RoQ - MultimediaWiki, website=wiki.multimedia.cx , -- ,

Nullsoft Streaming Video Nullsoft Streaming Video (NSV) was a media container designed for streaming video content over the Internet. NSV was developed by Nullsoft, the makers of Winamp. The NSV format is another example of streaming video formats, offered by various co ...

(NSV) , .nsv , NSV , ? , ? , For streaming video content over the Internet , - ,

(FLV) , .flv .f4v .f4p .f4a .f4b , Audio, video, text, data , Adobe Flash Platform , SWF, F4V, ISO base media file format , Developed by the Adobe Flash Platform

References

Video Video formats

List of video file formats

See also

References