The Ultimate Guide to Video Formats

For the uninitiated, video formats can be a cause of some confusion. And they can also be the root of holdups and delays when trying to get feedback from clients and colleagues involved in a production.

So what's the problem? Well, a video format is basically made up of two elements a container and a codec. The same container can use different codecs (and, conversely, the same codec can be used by different containers) and this is often the cause of confusion. How many times have you heard clients say they've been able to play an MP4 file before but the one you sent them doesn't work? This is often caused by problems with codecs.

What is a codec? Codecs are a method for making video smaller.

Outside of a professional environment, video needs to be compressed to be able to use it. Digital video is just data like any other file, but the average blu-ray film can be up to 50GB in size way too much for most people to be able to download, share or store locally. To get around this, the files have to be made smaller and this is where the codecs come in.

Using software, video is processed using the codec which, through various techniques and algorithms, compresses the data to create a smaller file. This usually comes with a loss of picture and sound quality because the lower the quality, the smaller the file size. If you're just looking at the result on a computer screen or through a website this is usually fine but the trick of compression is finding an acceptable balance between loss of quality and acceptable file size.

Once the file has been compressed using a particular codec, the same codec needs to be used to play it. This is where clients and colleagues can often have problems. Windows and Mac computers come with many of these codecs pre-installed but updated and new codecs are released all the time and these often don't make it to everyone, especially in corporate environments. Without the correct codec on their machine, the video player software they have will not be able to interpret the file.

Some examples of codecs that you may have heard of include DivX, FFmpeg, x264 and WMV but there are lots of different ones in use.

So what's the container? A container is a way of bundling together the various elements of a video into one file.

The elements will include a video codec and an audio codec, plus things like subtitles, chapter information and metadata. Because they are separated like this, containers mean you can use one codec for your video and one for your audio. This gives you the flexibility to make files smaller by using lower quality sound but retain a certain amount of visual quality.

Popular containers include AVI, MKV, MP4 (used by Apple in the iTunes Store) and MOV (which was created by Apple and is the native format for Quicktime).

The difference between containers is to do with how they support different features like subtitles or chapters, rather than the codec they use. As we said earlier, different containers can use the same codecs.

Avoiding issues If you're sending video to clients, it's obviously best to use a format that is most commonly supported. The H.264 codec is supported by Windows and Mac OS and is used for delivering Web video. Using a MP4 container means it'll work on just about anything including tablets and smartphones.

Alternatively, Aframe's video platform makes the process of producing and sharing video even easier.

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LINK:	http://aframe.com/blog/2013/03/27/the-ultimate-guide-to-video-formats...
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