Video

File Format
Name	Video
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Video

Introduction

For an excellent introduction to the issues around audio and video formats, see A Primer on Codecs for Moving Image and Sound Archives - and 10 Recommendations for Codec Selection & Management PDF version

Pure video formats

These formats are "monolithic" video formats, meaning that the file format and the encoding of the video data are tied to each other.

• Bink Video (BIK)
• Enhanced VOB
• FLIC (FLI/FLC; animation format used by older Autodesk products)
• GRASP GL animation format
• RealVideo
• Smacker/SMK (created by RadGameTools; mostly used in games)
• WMV

Video container formats

These formats are only containers for video, which can contain videos in many different encodings (or even other data like audio)

• ASF
• AVI
• FLV
• M4V
• MKV
• MXF
• QuickTime
• Replay
• VOB
• VP8
• WebM
• OGG containers (with their variants OGM, OGV, etc.)

Video stream formats

These formats are raw bitstream formats commonly contained in one of the above containers (but not necessarily)

• Apple Intermediate Codec
• Cinepak
• Dirac
• H.264
• HuffyYUV
• Indeo
• Moving Blocks - Acorn Replay stream
• MPEG and all of its variants (MPEG2, MPEG4, etc.)
  • 3ivx (this is just another fourcc for an MPEG4 variant)
  • DivX (this is essentially MPEG4 with some quirks)
  • XviD (another MPEG4 variant)
• Sorenson Video Codec
• Theora
• VC-1
• VC-3

Simple animation formats

• Ace Film

See Graphics: Animated image formats.

Metadata formats

• SRR (reScene files)
• SRS (reSample files)

Subtitle formats

• SUB and IDX (VobSub subtitle format)
• SUP (HD-DVD subtitle format)
• SSA and ASS (SubStation Alpha)
• SRT (SubRip)
• SMI (SAMI subtitle format)
• USF (subtitles) (Universal Subtitle Format)
• SSF (subtitles) (Structured Subtitle Format)
• CMML (Continuous Media Markup Language)
• CVD (An SVCD subtitle format)
• DVD (DVD subtitle format)
• DXFP (Distribution Format Exchange Profile)
• JACOsub (Subtitles for Amiga video)
• Kate (Kate subtitle format)
• OGT (Philips Overlay Graphics Text)
• STL (Spruce Subtitle Format)
• XSUB (XSUB subtitle format)

Video streaming services

• Amazon Instant Video
• Hulu
• Netflix Streaming
• Vimeo
• Xfinity On Demand
• YouTube

Television broadcast formats

• BTSC (NTSC with multichannel sound carrier)
• NTSC
• PAL
• SECAM

See Radio for more details of how such broadcasts are transmitted.

Unknown

These formats still need to be sorted into the above categories

• AVS
• Canopus ProCoder
• Cineform
• Cinema Craft Encoder
• Elecard
• FIASCO
• InterVideo
• MJ2
• MainConcept
• MSU Lossless Video Codec
• NSD (Nero Super Video CD)
• SheerVideo
• TechSmith Screen Capture Codec