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Different types of Video Formats

In this article, we are going to learn about the different types of the video formats.
Submitted by Diksha Tewari, on November 07, 2018

Whenever a video file is basically saved it contains two types of file in it. One is basically the container and second type of file is codecs. Container basically defines the structure of the video file and which type of codecs will be used. Codecs is basically used to compress and decompress original video file.

Some of common container format of video files are as follows:

1. AVI format (.avi):
   Audio Video Interleave basically contain both audios as well as video data. It was basically developed by Microsoft. It basically uses less compression and contains almost any type of codecs. It is commonly used by internet user due to multiple codecs support. It basically means that even if AVI files may look same from outside but they are different from one another on the inside basically all windows OS support this type of format including another player for other platform exist.
2. Flash Video Format (.flv):
   Flash video format is very popular due to the availability of flash player for cross-platform in the market. These type of video files are basically supported by almost every browser making suitable for web purpose. This type of format is compact and support progressive and streaming download. Some users who are using this format are Youtube, Yahoo! Video, VEVO etc.
3. MP4 (.mp4):
   This type of format is basically used to store to store audio and video stream online. This type of file format was created by Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) as a multimedia container format which can store audiovisual data. It uses different compression technique for both video and audio.
4. 3GP (.3gp):
   This type of format is basically design to store both audio and video file format which was designed to transmit data between 3G phones and the internet. It is most commonly used while we capture video from the phone and upload it online. Both Windows OS and Mac OS supports this type of format.
5. WMV (Windows Media Video):
   This type of video format was basically developed by Microsoft. It was basically designed for web streaming applications. This type of files is very small in size over the Web, as their file size decreases after compression and it basically leads to poor quality of the video. But this makes it only file format that can be sent through e-mail also.
6. QuickTime Format (.mov):
   This type of file format was developed by Apple. It is basically used to store multiple tracks(for a different language), text file(subtitle) and effects. MOV files are of high quality and these are usually large in file size. It is supported both by Windows OS and Apple OS.