MP4, MOV or AVI?
Every video fan at some point comes across the question: which video format is best for me?
Usually there is no general answer.
But don’t worry in this updated 2020 definitive guide, we’ve listed all the common formats as well as all the pros and cons of them.
After this post, you will know exactly which video format is right for you, what you can use each format for, and what advantages and disadvantages each is associated with.
To ensure you a pleasant reading flow, we have listed all the points in this article as a link below. If you are particularly interested in a topic, just click on the link and you will find the correct paragraph.
1. WMV
2. MJPEG
3. MPEG I and MPEG II
4. MPEG IV
5. MPEG VII
6. MKV
7. AVI
8. MOV
9. MP4
10. FLV
11. RM
12. OGG
13. MTS
But before going through each video format, a brief introduction to understand the individual formats.
Anyway, why are there so many formats?
The choice of video formats is great because many companies want to implement their own file format. Video formats are actually file containers with different content, initially only image and sound, which can be saved separately. Containers can contain more information such as captions, menu structures, time codes, or comments for further processing.
Sound and picture can be compressed inside the container with a wide variety of codecs. A codec uses algorithms to convert data packets, digital audio or video files in such a way that they save space. Depending on the codec that can be viewed, the quality of a video may differ in image and sound quality.
You have to know that:
1. The video format answers the following question: how digital video data is technically recorded.
2. There are formats that keep the data compressed (= reduced, lossy) or uncompressed.
3. The type of compression is determined by the so-called codecs.
4. By far the most popular types are: MP4, WebM, and OGG.
5. Video formats like MP4 can contain additional information like images, texts.
6. It is possible to copy (= transcode) from one video format to another.
1. WMV
Although WMV files take up very little disk space, they are not really widely used. Despite the fact that Microsoft planned and pushed it with great expectations.
Of course, the fact that they take up very little space makes them sacrifice in quality. The WMV player by essence is Windows Media Player, which although it is available for many platforms, is still a brake that you basically need to have the Microsoft media player to be able to reproduce it.
Advantages: very high compression possible
Disadvantage: very little used
2. MJPEG
Motion JPEG (MJPEG) is a video codec in which each individual image is compressed separately as a JPEG image. Unlike MPEG-compressed videos, MJPEG-compressed videos have a quality that is independent of image movement. This standard is often used in older digital cameras. Due to the individual compression of all individual images, with this format it is possible to cut a frame from a video clip accurately without the need to recode it, which is generally only possible with MPEG keyframes.
Advantages: high compression, high quality, web standard, very flexible
Disadvantage: computationally intensive
3. MPEG 1 and 2 (Moving Image Expert Group) * .mpg
Video format developed by a group of experts with standardized compression methods. The advantages of MPEG movies are comparatively small files with good image quality, but low resolution. In practice, MPEG-II movies are far superior to MPEG-I movies in terms of resolution and image quality.
Advantage: widespread use, can be played on almost any device
Disadvantage: outdated, no HD, correspondingly poorer video quality
4. MPEG 4 (Moving Image Experts Group) * .mp4
Video format developed by a group of experts with standardized compression methods.
Originally, the aim of MPEG-4 was to support systems with low resources or narrow bandwidths (mobile phones, videophones, …) with a relatively small loss of quality. Since H.263, an ITU standard for video compression and decoding, had already met these requirements successfully, it was integrated into MPEG-4 as part 2 without major changes.
MPEG-4 movies are even more compressed and do not have a noticeable loss of quality: very small files with very good resolution. In practice, MPEG-4 places somewhat higher demands on the performance of the computer, since highly compressed data must first be “decompressed” again when played back.
Advantages: high compression, high quality, web standard, very flexible
Disadvantage: computationally intensive
5. MPEG 7
MPEG-7 is an ISO standard (ISO / IEC 15938) that was adopted in 2002 and was defined by the Moving Picture Experts Group, or MPEG for short. MPEG-7 is not a real compression standard, but it is used to describe multimedia data with the help of meta information and is stored in the form of one or more XML documents. It can be added to the time code, for example, to mark certain events or, for example, to synchronize the lyrics with a song.
Advantages: good content organization
Disadvantages: many complex XML schemas
6. MKV
One could suppose that it is based on a concept that we could qualify as similar to other containers such as MP4 and AVI, the Matroska Video (MKV) format is open source, which makes it different to a good extent .. MKV has the ability to be a container of a number, we would say that there are unlimited video and audio channels in addition to multilingual subtitles in a file, which is why it could be said that today it occupies a predominant place on the Internet when it comes to competing with other formats.
Advantages: good video quality, very good compression compression.
Disadvantage: certain playback limitations, depending on the device.
7. AVI
AVI takes its name from “Audio Video Interleave”. AVI is one of the most widely used formats and can be played almost everywhere.
It has been widely known for many years since Microsoft gave it a lot of strength and it has been one of its base formats..
Advantage: wide distribution
Disadvantage: inflexible
8. MOV
This format was developed by Apple and achieved a lot of acceptance. I used QuickTime Player from the beginning. An advantage of MOV is that it is possible to use many different CODECS for either compressing audio files or video files. It is compatible with practically all platforms (Mac and Windows, iOS, iPhone and iPad.)
Advantage: It has earned a place that puts it as a standard format for professionally produced work
Disadvantage: Not all devices are capable of playing it
9. MP4
It can be said that it comes from or is based, in some way, on QuickTime, MP4 has earned the most important place when it comes to being the ideal format to be shared on networks. MP4 has almost no loss and has a great quality surpassing many of its competitors. MP4 is compatible with most computers and phones.
Advantages: video compression without noticeable loss of quality
Web standard
Versatile in use
Cons: not suitable for streaming
10. FLV
FLV or Flash Video format is mainly used for streaming video files online through Adobe Flash Player. FLV video files retain good quality even after being compressed, so users can upload videos online faster. Now its almost dead since Flash does not work in most web browsers.
Advantages: high compression.
Disadvantage: almost dead.
11. RM (Real Average) * .rm
A collective term for the file formats of the software maker RealNetworks, in particular the Real-Audio audio format and the Real-Video video format. It is used primarily in streaming applications. Real files are lossy, but the quality of real video files is still comparatively good, especially with high compression.
Files compressed with RealVideo are lossy. The quality of RealVideo files is generally comparatively good with high compression, older versions are poor with low compression compared to MPEG for example. However, the quality of the newer versions is comparable to MPEG-4 video codecs like Xvid or DivX as well as Windows Media Video 9. RealVideo usually occurs in the RealMedia container and then has its file extension .rv, .ram, .rm, or .rmvb.
Pros: RTP support
Disadvantages: compressed real video movies are lossy
12.Ogg .ogg
Ogg is a container file format for multimedia files, so it can hold audio, video, and text data at the same time. Ogg was designed with the goal of offering a free and unrestricted software patent alternative to proprietary formats for efficient storage and streaming of multimedia content. The ability to transmit is the decisive design feature: everything that is packaged in an Ogg container can be transmitted without additional adjustments. This distinguishes Ogg from formats that are only capable of streaming in certain ways (like Matroska) or not capable of live streaming (like MP4). Ogg streams can be grouped and chained without having to adjust the individual stream.
Ogg Theora is not very common in the video field. However, it is enjoying increasing popularity in the open source scene. For HD videos, the Matroska format, which is also free, is gaining more and more ground outside of the open source scene, so it remains to be seen what role Ogg Theora will play in the future.
Advantage:
– Diversity of platforms
– open source code
– Easy to handle
5.1 surround information: playback without pauses
Disadvantage:
– High bit rate ranges
13. MTS
MTS is a video format for HD video from camcorders from manufacturers such as Panasonic and Sony. This format produces a high-quality video that is larger than the same video in any other format. The format is only compatible with some devices. If you want to play an MTS file on an Android or iOS device, for example, it is almost impossible. Only Blu-ray players, the Sony PlayStation 3, and a handful of other devices support the MTS format. To use MTS videos on other devices, you need to convert MTS to MP4. Of course, MTS files can also be converted to other popular formats like AVI, MKV, and WMV.
Advantages: high quality
Cons: inflexible
Well now that we have reviewed all the formats, the following question arises:
What is the best video format?
The different video formats have very different capabilities, some allow you to have many different tracks, some with subtitles and several audio tracks simultaneously. Obviously each format is only capable of being processed by some specific codecs. So, if we see that some can contain many tracks and that each one uses a different codec, we will understand that the resulting size will be very different, as well as the quality and resolution. That is, each format will offer very different results.
However, there is no clear answer to the question of what is the best video format. However, you could say that a particular format is the best and a good all-rounder.
MP4: a good all-rounder
The MP4 format is always right. All common browsers and operating systems support it. It also combines HD image quality with a small file size. This allows the user to save the video to hard drive or cloud, share it with others, play it on common mobile devices, or upload it to a video platform.
Video formats for mobile and web devices
Videos intended for a mobile device should take up little space. The MP4 format, which is compatible with iOS and Android, is ideal here. MOV format is also possible for Apple devices.
When asked which video format is best for a video on a website, the user needs to consider what formats the browser supports. Again, MP4 is the best option due to its high compatibility. The Google WebM video format works flawlessly, at least on Microsoft and Android devices.
