Whenever a video file is saved it contains two file in it. One is the container and other is codecs. Container defines the structure of the video file and which codecs will be used. Codecs is used to compress and decompress video file. Some of common container format are:
- Flash Video Format (.flv) This video format is very popular due to the availability of flash player for cross platform. These video files are supported by almost every browser making suitable for web. This format is compact and support progressive and streaming download. Some users of this format are Youtube, Yahoo! Video, VEVO etc.
- AVI format (.avi) Audio Video Interleave which can contain both audio and video data. It was developed by Microsoft. It uses less compression can contain almost any codecs. It is popular among internet user due to multiple codecs support. This means that even if AVI files may look similar on the outside are different from one another on the inside All windows OS support this format including another player for other platform exist.
- MP4 (.mp4) This format is used to store to store audio and video stream online. MP4 file format was created by Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) as a multimedia container format store audiovisual data. It used different compression technique for video and audio.
- 3GP (.3gp) This is both audio and video file format which was designed to transmit data between 3G phones and the internet. It is most commonly used to capture video from the phone and upload it online. Both Windows and Mac support the format.
- WMV (Windows Media Video) This format was developed by Microsoft. It was designed for web streaming applications. WMV files are the very small in size over the Web, as their file size decreases after compression, due to which results in poor video quality. But this make it only file format which can be send through e-mail.
- QuickTime Format (.mov) This format was developed by Apple.It can store multiple tracks(for different language), text file(subtitle) and effects. MOV files are of high quality and are usually big in file size. It is supported both by Windows and Apple.
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