The audiovisual content It is, without a doubt, the most consumed today. Thus, knowing everything about how we can reproduce it is of special interest. This is made up of a signal, codecs and a container. The latter is what we know as video and that’s what we’ll talk about today.
The format or extension of any video is that set of letters that appears at the end of the file name. It may not seem important to you, however, it tells us about many aspects of the file and, above all, it allows us to play it in different programs and playback devices.
Knowing this, surely now you are interested in knowing exactly what it is, what we use it for and, obviously, what different formats are there todaywhere we reproduce them and what are their characteristics, right?
What is the extension or format of a video file and what is it really for?
An extension is the information of a file that will indicate, first, what kind is it and, later, some other peculiarities of each one of them.
The video extension is the way to indicate the way in which the audiovisual content is encoded to be able to reproduce it digitally. for one player or another.
In other words, the extension, that is, the end of the file name (.MKV, for example) refers to the container used to create that encoding that allows us to make a digital reproduction of the content. This is from between two and five letters and/or digits. In addition, they are usually an abbreviation of some word or group of these.
By default, the operating system hides these letters, so we only see what the file in question is called, but not what its container is. This is a risk because there are formats that obviously do not correspond to videos and, if we download a file that we think is an audiovisual and it turns out to be malware in an executable, we run it, and that’s it! We already have malicious software on our computer.
So, the same is configure your equipment so that the extensions, whatever they are, are always visible and you can see the that you have saved
When speaking of, of course, we refer to the digital software that we all have on our computers, tablets and even smartphonesalthough we must not forget also the physical players, the most current being the Blu-raywhich also works only with the formats it is compatible with.
This means that, depending on the program you have to play videos, these will have to be encoded in one or another format. or vice versaif you have an audiovisual in a particular extension, you will need a player with which it is compatible.
In general, the players that we can download include a sufficiently wide compatibility to be able to work with the files with the most famous extensions, so it will not be difficult for you to find one capable of playing exactly the file you want (even the players of the various operating systems are quite generous about it). Even so, don’t worry about it because later we are going to tell you which formats are compatible with some and other playback programs.
In the case of videos, which is what concerns us, you should know that this coding that is performed is directly related to image quality that we are going to be able to reproduce. They also come into play the sound quality or the inclusion of subtitles and, of course, the relationship between all of the above and the size that the file in question is going to have.
For example, there are extensions that respect the high quality of the contents but, in return, do not reduce the weight of the files, so that they can easily occupy several GB. Others, on the other hand, can compress the content, reducing its quality but making the final file lightweight and, with it, easy to move between memory units and easier to download. Of course, there are formats that offer something in between. The important thing is to know them to know which ones are best for you to get based on your needs.
Knowing that, in addition to the extension itself, that it is intrinsic to the file, that is, that it is part of it from the moment you create it, and of the player, you will need to have the codecs installed corresponding, which are software capable of interpreting the encoding performed. When the result is obtained, it is sent, decoded, to the player, that is, the codecs they act as an intermediary so that the latter understands the information that is encoded.
Codecs can be downloadedwithout any complication, from the internet although, today, the usual thing is that each player includes those that are used to interpret the files with which they are compatible.
Types of extensions and formats of video files and their associated programs to play them
As you can imagine if you have thought a bit about the definition we have just given you, there are many different video formats or extensions. We’ll see, in a comparative tablemost of them, with special emphasis on the best known, showing you what features they include and in which program or player we can run them in each case.
Extension Features Program
- Video and audio standard.
- Good quality.
- Results in resolution up to UHD.
- Allows more than one audio channel.
- Light weight files thanks to a very good compression.
- MP4 player devices
- game consoles
- DVD’s
- Digital TVs with USB
- Smartphones
- Player software (Winows Media, VLC, DivX Plus Player, CyberLink PowerDVD, Media Player Classic, Winamp, iTunes, MP4 Player…)
- Converters (Alive MP4 Converter, MP4 Converter, RZ MP4 Converter, Softstunt MP4 Video Converter…)
- 100% free.
- It is a container that can include all kinds of information, not just video.
- They distribute audiovisual content of all definitions.
- You can store multiple audio tracks and subtitles.
- Good quality for video.
- It takes up little space.
- TVs, via USB
- All kinds of player software
- Specifically designed for streaming.
- It is encoded with the vast majority of codecs.
- Mainly browsers.
.QT or .QTL
- Container for one or more tracks.
- Each of them works with a different encoding data stream.
- As a result we have a compressed video file
- Very flexible files, interesting for editing.
- Player software (QuickTime, Roxio Toast, Eltima Elmedia, Adobe Flash Professional CC, CyberLink PowerDVD…)
- Standard digital video format,
- You can include several audio streams in the same file,
- Excellent video quality.
- considerable weight.
- It supports a wide variety of compression codecs.
- Requires interleave of elements.
- These are called chuncks and an identifier is associated with them.
- All the players although some require additional installation of codecs
- Standard storage from video camera
or .QT
- It has its own codec.
- High quality.
- Used to post videos on the web.
- Good use for streaming.
- Ideal for editing due to its structure and the ease of separating the tracks.
- digital video cameras
- PlayStation and XBox consoles
- QuickTime as the main multimedia system
- Media Player if codecs are downloaded
- Linux and VLC players
- It is also a standard that other extensions adhere to
- compressed video
- Compendium of several standards (MPEG-1 (low resolution), MPEG-2 (for DVDs and digital satellite and cable TV), MPEG-4 -it is the .mp4 that we have seen in the first place-, MPEG-7, MPEG-21 )
- DVD players
- Own player, Xing MPEG Player
- Players (Windows Media, VLC, Media Player Classic, Winamp, iTunes, Apple QuickTime Player…)
- Video editors (CyberLink PowerDirector, CyberLink PowerDVD…)
- Converters (Xilisoft Video Converter,
.WebM
- free and open standard
- Used with HTML5
- Requires external container, MKV
- Converters (Total Video Converter, WebM Converter, Bigasoft WebM Converter, Miro Video Converter…)
- Browsers (Google Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer, Firefox…)
- Players (VLC Media Player, Media Player Classic, MediaCoder, MPlayer, Winamp, Windows Media Player…)
.RealMedia, .RM, .RM or .RMVB
- Used for video streaming
- Compress with own codec.
- Good quality/weight ratio that allows its upload on the internet.
- Own player, Real Player
- Players (VideoLAN VLC, Easy RM Producer, ALL Player, jetAudio, Elmedia Player, xine, OPlayer HD…)
- Converters (ShedWorx Smart Converter, Xilisoft Video Converter, Freemake Video Converter, Smart Converter…)
either .
- The video is configurable in various aspects.
- proprietary software; requires paid programs to encode video.
- Pretty good visual quality and low bitrate.
- Use to transmit flash video on the internet, for streaming and in repositories such as Google Video, YouTube…
- Browsers, with plugin installation (except Chrome, which doesn’t need it)
- Adobe Flash Player as the main player
- Players (VLC, MPlayer, Riva, Xine…)
.wmv or .asf
- It works with non-standardized MPEG.
- Proprietary format, requires paid converters
- Video in high resolution.
- Multichannel audio.
- Use for video publishing on the internet and for streaming
- Any Windows app
- XBox and PlayStation consoles
- Players (Nullsoft Winamp media Player, VLC Media Player, Media Player Classic…)
.VOB or .DVD
- Work with VOB container.
- Limited resolution.
- It is created with Windows DVD Maker.
- It is placed on optical, physical discs.
- DVD player devices
- consoles
- DVD publishers
*If you are viewing the web from your smartphone, slide the table to the right to see all the data
Do you know other extensions to play and edit video files? Leave them in the comments and we will add them to the list, they will surely be of great value to other readers!
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