3GP video file format

3GP is a simplified version of the MPEG-4 Part 14 (MP4) container format, designed to decrease storage and bandwidth requirements in order to accommodate mobile phones. It stores video streams as MPEG-4 Part 2 or H.263 or MPEG-4 Part 10 (AVC/H.264), and audio streams as AMR-NB, AMR-WB, AMR-WB+ or AAC-LC.

ASF (container for Microsoft WMA and WMV)

Advanced Systems Format (formerly Advanced Streaming Format, Active Streaming Format) is Microsoft's proprietary digital audio/digital video container format, especially meant for streaming media. ASF is part of the Windows Media framework.

The format does not specify how - i.e.

AVI (standard Microsoft Windows container9

Audio Video Interleave, known by its acronym AVI, is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows technology. AVI files can contain both audio and video data in a standard container that allows synchronous audio-with-video playback.

DivX

DivX is a brand name of products created by DivX, Inc. (formerly DivXNetworks, Inc.), including the DivX Codec which has become popular due to its ability to compress lengthy video segments into small sizes while maintaining relatively high visual quality.

DVR-MS

DVR-MS (Microsoft Digital Video Recording) is a proprietary video and audio file format, developed by Microsoft. Video is encoded using the MPEG-2 standard and audio using MPEG-1 Layer II or Dolby Digital AC-3 (ATSC A/52).

IFF

Interchange File Format (IFF), is a generic file format originally introduced by the Electronic Arts company in 1985 (in cooperation with Commodore-Amiga) in order to ease transfer of data between software products produced by different companies.

IFF files do not have any common extension. Most files with .

Matroska / MKV Video file format

The Matroska Multimedia Container is an open standard free Container format, a file format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture or subtitle tracks inside a single file. It is intended to serve as a universal format for storing common multimedia content, like movies or TV shows.

MOV (Apple QuickTime video container)

The QuickTime (.mov) file format functions as a multimedia container file that contains one or more tracks, each of which stores a particular type of data: audio, video, effects, or text (for subtitles, for example).

MP4

MPEG-4 Part 14, formally ISO/IEC 14496-14:2003, is a multimedia container format standard specified as a part of MPEG-4. It is most commonly used to store digital audio and digital video streams, especially those defined by MPEG, but can also be used to store other data such as subtitles and still images.

MPEG

The Moving Picture Experts Group, commonly referred to as simply MPEG, is a working group of ISO/IEC charged with the development of video and audio encoding standards. Its first meeting was in May of 1988 in Ottawa, Canada.

MPEG-2

MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information".

MXF

Material eXchange Format (MXF) is a container format for professional digital video and audio media defined by a set of SMPTE standards.

NUT

NUT (file-extension: .nut) is a patent-free, multimedia container format originally conceived by a few MPlayer and FFmpeg developers that were dissatisfied with the limitations of all currently available multimedia container formats such as AVI, Ogg or Matroska.

Ogg (video)

Ogg is an open standard for a free container format for digital multimedia, unrestricted by software patents and designed for efficient streaming and manipulation. Ogg is maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation.

OGM

Ogg Media (OGM), meaning Ogg Media File, is a container format (for video, audio and subtitle streams). It was developed by Tobias Waldvogel and can do a few things the common AVI format cannot.

ratDVD

ratDVD is a highly compressed file type, containing all the contents of a Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) movie. Files compressed by ratDVD are usually one to two gigabytes in size. It is currently available only for the Microsoft Windows Operating system.

ratDVD works by compressing a full DVD into a .

RealMedia

RealMedia is a multimedia container format created by RealNetworks. Its extension is ".rm". It is typically used in conjunction with RealVideo and RealAudio and is popular for streaming content over the Internet.

Typically these streams are in CBR (constant bitrate).

VOB

A VOB file (Video Object) is a container format contained in DVD-Video media. VOB is based on MPEG-2 program stream format, but with some additions. It contains the actual Video, Audio, Subtitle, and Menu contents in stream form.

If the VOB file extension is changed from .

XviD

Xvid  is a video codec library following the MPEG-4 standard. Xvid features MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile features such as b-frames, global and quarter pixel motion compensation, lumi masking, trellis quantization, and H.263, MPEG and custom quantization matrices.