Under the “Details” tab you will see the file format and codecs used. On Windows, right-click the file and click “Properties”. On Mac, right-click the video file and click “Get Info”, then under “More Info” you should see both the video and audio codec. Container formats can be paired with different codecs that influence what devices and programs the file will be compatible with. The container format is also more generally called “the format”, and is reflected in the file’s extension. The container file holds the metadata and compressed video data which is encoded using the codec. The container format is a definition of how the file metadata and data are structured, excluding how the video is actually encoded (which the codec determines). A well-engineered codec has high efficiency, or ability to preserve quality while reducing file size. Common codecs include H.264, MPEG-4, and DivX. Video files are made of 2 parts: a codec and a container.Ī video codec is a protocol for encoding and decoding video (the word codec comes from “enCOde / DECode”). What is the difference between a video codec, video container, and a video file format? Other formats are high quality and the right choice for commercial videography but are very large in size. Some formats are extremely small and are great for web video streaming, but are low quality. The best video format for you depends on how you would like to balance the quality and size of the video file. Unfortunately, there is no single “best” video format.

Like in our last article The Complete Image File Extension List for Developers, and How to Choose the Best Audio File Format and Codec, in this article we’ll delve into the different types of audio/video file types, and when to use which type of audio or video format for your application.įirst, let’s get a couple of common questions out of the way: Which is the best video format?

MP4 and more, there are many video file formats you can expect to come across as a developer handling audio/video content in your application.

Video player for mac plays all formats