Currently popular video containers
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AVI (Audio Video Interleaved) is an old (1992!) Container type and still very popular. We appreciate your appearance at Microsoft and the Video for Windows package. It is currently starting to lose ground to more modern containers due to lack of normal support for various modern audio tracks, subtitles and codecs (such as h.264), however it will remain popular for a long time due to increased support. from appliance manufacturers. It is generally used in combination with MPEG4 / DivX / Xvid codecs and compressed mp3 audio.
MKV (Matroska, “Matryoshka”) is a modern container, developed as an open source project and lacks all the downsides of AVI: modern audio and video codecs, multiple audio tracks, and multi-track intro with Subtitle. Usually, but not necessarily, it is used in combination with modern h.264 / x.264 / AVC-1 codecs. Subjectively, it is the most popular for Internet distribution and local storage of high-quality video.
But nobody bothers, for example, to put MKV video inside, compressed by the “good old” Xvid. Also, in some situations, such actions are justified.
QuickTime (file extensions – *. Mov or *. Qt) is a fairly progressive container created by Apple, it supports almost all popular codecs and subtitle embeddings, moreover, unlike MKV, it is much more suitable for editing video material. engraved on said container. …
However, its normal support is only possible with the Apple QuickTime package installed on the computer; third-party open source reverse engineering developments do not provide full functionality.
ASF / WMV / WMA (Advanced Stream Format / Windows Media Video): Microsoft’s AVI replacement, file extensions, respectively: ASF, WMV, WMA (for audio files). Despite all the progressive innovations (support for multiple tracks, chapters, new codecs), support for h.264 is still difficult for them, which puts the future of this container in doubt.
FLV – Adobe Flash Video. It became tremendously popular thanks to YouTube. In the process of evolution, I learned to use modern audio and video codecs, but its focus on short, highly compressed Internet videos limits the scope of its distribution. For some reason embedded subtitles are not supported.
BDMV is in fact an uncompressed Blu-ray disc image, it has all the imaginable “advantages” (support for all modern audio and video formats, up to 3D), but it has serious demands on disk space and loading decoder. Therefore, the support of hardware players is still very limited.
3GP is a container focused on filming videos with mobile phones. Hence the limited support for audio formats, video formats are supported very progressively. There are no alternate audio tracks, timecode instead of subtitles. The weapon of a mobile reporter, in a nutshell.
MP4 is quite a progressive container, it supports video compression not only in MPEG4, as you might think from the name, but also using more modern methods. But I lost to the “matryoshka” in terms of support for subtitles and audio formats.
Divx is a container from the creators of the codec of the same name. Despite some progressiveness, it did not receive the same distribution. The reason is that you can only use the codec of the same name for video, and who needs it after that, if the “nesting doll” is more universal.
VOB is actually the official name of this MPEG 2 program stream container, that is, it is actually the content of the DVD. It supports only two video codecs, MPEG1 and MPEG2, otherwise the standard of the “before HDTV” era, because there is support for subtitles, chapters (if you take the whole disc as a single container) and various audio formats, including very progressive ones.
.ts MPEG 2 Transport stream, also found in files with the m2ts and mts extensions, popular due to digital satellite transmission, capable of using, despite the name, modern codecs and FullHD resolutions. Popular with fans of satellite TV, but inferior to “Matryoshka” in terms of flexibility of use.
OGG is a container formally designed to store audio in the OGG Vorbis format, but it can also store video. Despite the stated capabilities, it is exotic (this applies to video), for sound this container has already taken hold.
WAV is a container for storing sound, not necessarily uncompressed.
ISO is just an optical disc image. Anything can be inside. How the player will assimilate it is up to its developers.
MPG: Legacy VideoCD, MPEG 1 single format video container.
