These tables compare features of multimedia container formats, most often used for storing or streaming digital video or digital audio content. To see which multimedia players support which container format, look at comparison of media players.

General information

In many ways, derived containers are similar to those on which they are based, sometimes extending them, sometimes limiting their capabilities. * QTFF ** ISO BMFF *** MP4 *** 3GPP, 3GPP2 *** F4V * MPEG-PS **

MPEG-TS MPEG transport stream (MPEG-TS, MTS) or simply transport stream (TS) is a standard digital container format for transmission and storage of audio, video, and Program and System Information Protocol (PSIP) data. It is used in broadcast systems ...

***

M2TS .m2ts is a filename extension used for the Blu-ray disc Audio-Video (BDAV) MPEG-2 Transport Stream (M2TS) container file format. It is used for multiplexing audio, video and other streams. It is based on the MPEG-2 transport stream container.Blu- ...

** VOB *** EVOB * MCF **

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 Advan ...

***

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 sponso ...

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 accompanim ...

** AVI *** DMF * RM **

RMVB 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 ...

Attachments (additional files, such as fonts for subtitles) are only supported in

, MP4 and QTFF.

supports attachments as multiple files in a specific file structure: fonts for subtitles are in .otf files in the /BDMV/AUXDATA/ directory. Some common multimedia file formats are not completely distinct container formats. Some are containers for specific audio and video coding formats, such as

, a subset of

. Some are combinations of common container formats and audio and video coding profiles, such as

AVCHD AVCHD (Advanced Video Coding High Definition) is a file-based format for the digital recording and playback of high-definition video. It is H.264 and Dolby AC-3 packaged into the MPEG transport stream, with a set of constraints designed around the ...

and DivX formats. Although sometimes compared to DivX products,

Xvid Xvid (formerly "XviD") is a video codec library following the MPEG-4 video coding standard, specifically MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP). It uses ASP features such as b-frames, global and quarter pixel motion compensation, lumi ma ...

is neither a container format nor a video format, it is a software library that encodes video using specific coding profiles of the common MPEG-4 ASP video format. Those types of restrictions are intended to simplify the construction of multimedia recorders and players.

Video coding formats support

Some containers only support a restricted set of video formats: * DMF only supports

MPEG-4 Visual 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 ...

ASP with DivX profiles. *

EVO EVO or Evo may refer to: Companies * Evo (company), American sporting goods and outdoor recreation retailer Games * Evolution Championship Series, an annual fighting game esports tournament in the US * ''Evo'' (board game), a 2001 board game * ...

only supports

MPEG-4 AVC 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 ...

, MPEG-1 Video,

MPEG-2 Video H.262 or MPEG-2 Part 2 (formally known as ITU-T Recommendation H.262 and ISO/IEC 13818-2, also known as MPEG-2 Video) is a video coding format standardised and jointly maintained by ITU-T Study Group 16 Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) and IS ...

and

VC-1 SMPTE 421, informally known as VC-1, is a video coding format. Most of it was initially developed as Microsoft's proprietary video format Windows Media Video 9 in 2003. With some enhancements including the development of a new Advanced Profile, ...

. *

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 ...

only supports

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 container ...

MNG 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 ...

, JNG, PNG and Dirac.

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...

supports VP9 and VP8 in Ogg. VLC supports

and

in Ogg. *

only supports

RealVideo RealVideo, or also spelled as Real Video, is a suite of proprietary video compression formats developed by RealNetworks – the specific format changes with the version. It was first released in 1997 and was at version 10. RealVideo is supporte ...

versions RV30, RV40 and RV60. *

only supports VP9 and VP8. Support for AV1 is in development.

Audio coding formats support

Some containers only support a restricted set of audio formats: * DMF only supports

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. Orig ...

, AC-3, DTS and

LPCM Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a method used to digitally represent sampled analog signals. It is the standard form of digital audio in computers, compact discs, digital telephony and other digital audio applications. In a PCM stream, the a ...

. *

only supports

, AC-3, E-AC-3, DTS, MP2, MP1,

DTS-HD DTS-HD Master Audio (DTS-HD MA; known as DTS++ before 2004) is a multi-channel, lossless audio codec developed by DTS as an extension of the lossy DTS Coherent Acoustics codec (DTS CA; usually itself referred to as just DTS). Rather than being ...

Dolby TrueHD Dolby TrueHD is a lossless, multi-channel audio codec developed by Dolby Laboratories for home video, used principally in Blu-ray Disc and compatible hardware. Dolby TrueHD, along with Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC-3) and Dolby AC-4, is one of th ...

, MLP and

. *

only supports

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) publicati ...

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 con ...

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...

A-law An A-law algorithm is a standard companding algorithm, used in European 8-bit PCM digital communications systems to optimize, i.e. modify, the dynamic range of an analog signal for digitizing. It is one of two versions of the G.711 standard ...

PCM, μ-law PCM,

IEEE floating-point The IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic (IEEE 754) is a technical standard for floating-point arithmetic established in 1985 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The standard addressed many problems found in ...

PCM,

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 ...

and CELT. OGMtools supports

and AC-3 in Ogg. *

only supports AC-3, ATRAC3,

G.728 G.728 is an ITU-T standard for speech coding operating at 16 kbit/s. It is officially described as ''Coding of speech at 16 kbit/s using low-delay code excited linear prediction''. Technology used is LD-CELP, low-delay code excited linear pre ...

, AAC-LC, HE-AAC v1, IS-54,

Cook Codec {{Unreferenced, date=April 2010 The cook codec is a lossy audio compression 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 communic ...

, Sipro Lab,

ACELP Algebraic code-excited linear prediction (ACELP) is a speech coding algorithm in which a limited set of pulses is distributed as excitation to a linear prediction filter. It is a linear predictive coding (LPC) algorithm that is based on the cod ...

-NET and RealAudio Lossless. *

only supports

and

. Audio-only content can sometimes be placed in a simpler audio-only container, such as Native FLAC for

and ADTS for

AAC AAC may refer to: Aviation * Advanced Aircraft, a company from Carlsbad, California * Alaskan Air Command, a radar network * American Aeronautical Corporation, a company from Port Washington, New York * American Aviation, a company from Cleveland, ...

Subtitle formats support

Some containers only support a restricted set of subtitle formats: * DMF only supports XSUB. *

only supports

HD DVD HD DVD (short for High Definition Digital Versatile Disc) is an obsolete high-density optical disc format for storing data and playback of high-definition video. Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to ...

. *

only supports Ogg Kate and CMML. SubRip can be converted losslessly to Ogg Kate. Ogg Writ is well supported in Ogg in common tools such as OGMtools and VLC, but there's no intention to turn its draft into a fully supported specification. Xiph recommends using Kate for subtitles. MicroDVD can be converted to Ogg Writ. *

only supports RealText. SMIL can be partially converted to RealText. *

only supports WebVTT. SubRip can be converted losslessly to WebVTT. Converting image subtitles to text formats is possible using third-party tools but relies on

optical character recognition Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a sc ...

, which is not perfectly accurate and can at best extract basic formatting. Conversion of text to images is possible while preserving content and style.

Round-trip format conversion {{noref, date=January 2019 The term round-trip is used in document conversion particularly involving markup languages such as XML and SGML. A successful round-trip consists of converting a document in format A (docA) to one in format B (docB) and t ...

between text formats may not be possible without losing some formatting features.

Overhead

Multimedia

containers 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 ...

interleave data in media streams to enable efficient playback using fewer computational resources, such as time spent reading from the storage drive, memory needed to buffer selected media streams, and time spent decoding when seeking to a different position in time. In this sense, muxing overhead is the control information added by the container to carry interleaved streams. A smaller overhead results in a smaller file when carrying the same streams with the same data. Overhead is affected by the total number of packets and by the size of stream packet headers. In high bitrate encodings, the content payload is usually large enough to make the overhead data relatively insignificant, but in low bitrate encodings, the inefficiency of the overhead can significantly affect the resulting file size if the container uses large stream packet headers or a large number of packets. In general,

requires the least overhead, followed by MP4, AVI and

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Comparison Of Container Formats Video container Formats *Comparison Video container

General information

Video coding formats support

Audio coding formats support

Subtitle formats support

Overhead

See also

Notes

References