As with text documents, photographs or audios, digital video is available in different formats or extensions.
In this sense, today we find DVD and Blu-Ray, although some of us still keep in an old VHS closet and maybe some Betacam.
But a second meaning or meaning of video formats refers to their encoding, since in digital video, as with a computer program, any file is written in a certain code.
In videos, the code influences image quality, sound quality, whether or not it includes subtitles and, especially, the relationship between quality and file size.
Thus, today we consume digital audiovisual content through physical discs (DVD, Blu-Ray), through streaming and through IPTV (Internet television), but we also handle digital video files, especially for content that we generate ourselves.
Next we will review the most common digital video formats that we can find, what is their origin and what benefits they offer. I apologize in advance for the gibberish of acronyms.
AVI
We start with the most popular format that we will find. Video files with an .AVI extension have their origin in a format that was launched in 1992 and is so popular that most smart TVs, DVD / Blu-Ray players, video game consoles and operating systems play it.
AVI is an acronym for Audio Video Interleave and not many know that it was created by Microsoft as a digital alternative without dependence on a physical format such as the then popular DVD.
Among its advantages, it allows you to include several audio channels and host content generated with different codecs (AC3 or MP3 for audio, DivX or Xvid for video), which can be an advantage but also an inconvenience with which players.
MP4
MP4 or MPEG-4 is one of the most modern formats, launched in 1998 as a standard for playing video and audio in a single digital file.
MPEG stands for Moving Picture Experts Group, the expert group that has established digital audio and video standards and was formed by two international organizations, the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission).
In summary, the MPEG and MPEG-2 format were launched in 1993 and 1995 respectively as standards for encoding digital audio and video. To understand each other, any DVD offers its audiovisual content in MPEG-2.
MP4 also supports several audio channels, but has the advantage of allowing more image and sound quality in a less heavy file, as it compresses data better. Apple, for example, opts for this format and derivatives for its iTunes content.
Related to MP4 we can find M4V (video) or M4A (audio).
MKV
The MKV video format is an open format, free to pay rights, and whose full name is Matroska, like traditional Russian dolls.
MKV saw the light at the end of 2002 and has become popular thanks to the fact that within a single MKV file we can store, together with the audio channel, several channels or audio tracks and several subtitle tracks.
Like MP4, it offers very good audio and video quality in a small space. And as a curiosity, the WebM format that allows you to integrate online video via HTML, is inspired by Matroska.
FLV
The FLV or Flash Video format was created by Macromedia, and subsequently acquired by Adobe. This format is usually found as an FLV or SWF extension.
Like the other Flash content, FLV videos are designed for online playback from the browser through Adobe Flash Player.
As we saw in a previous article, Flash will stop developing in 2020, although we still find pages that use it.
MOV
I said before that Apple is currently betting on MP4 (and AAC) to facilitate multimedia content. But its star format for many years was MOV.
MOV, from QuickTime Movie, is also called QuickTime File Format, and today it is still the default format of QuickTime, the macOS video player.
This format can also be found in many digital video cameras, since it offers very good quality
