Introduction of Video/Audio Codec and File format
It seems that more and more people come to wonder about the many formats of audio and video. This curiosity arose for certain reasons. As you know ,3G mobiles are upgraded with each passing day , portable gadgets such as PDA are quite on the way to ubiquity, and necessarily accompanied by the enhancement of bandwidth, some ABCs about audio and video become a must. Since if you are lost about what kind of format your gadget supports, problems will dog you.
There are various ways to encode audio and video, among which the usually used ones are classified into the following several kinds:
MPEG:
the mainly used formats for videos are MPEG1(also referred to as vcd),MPEG2(used by DVD),MPEG(DVDIP uses its variations as divx ,xvid,etc.)and MPEG4 AVC( very hot now);
For audio format ,MPEG Audio Layer 1/2,MPED Audio Layer3( that’s mp3),MPED-2 AAC,MPEG-4 AAC etc. Attention: MPEG is not applied for DVD audio .
H.264 series:
its family includes H262, H263, H263+, H263++, H264(combination of MPEG AVC)
Microsoft windows media series: ( Well, big guy always has his own way of doing things)~~
Its video format has MPEG-4 v1/v2/v3( based on MPEG4,DIVX3),Windows Media Video 7/8/9/10
Audio formats: Windows Media audio v1/v2/7/8/9
Then the familiar Real Media series: First, I’d like to make it clear that the format of Real here has nothing to do with rm or rmvb files~~
Video formats : Real Video G2( early version),Real Video 8/9/10
Audio formats:Real Audio cook/sipro（also early version）,RealAudio AAC/AACPlus etc.
QuickTime series: ( a kind of platform, with many kinds of coders)
Video formats: Sorenson Video 3( for QT5, a ratified standard),Apple MPEG-4,Apple H.264
Audio formats:QDesign Music 2,Apple MPEG-4AAC (a hot one)
I want spend a few more words about the audio formats of DVD, it applies some relatively independent formats, such as AC3, DTS
File formats(container):
AVI
Audio/viedo interleave, the most ubiquitous audio/video container format, which support the most audio and video formats
MPG
The audio/video container for MPEG, has a streaming attribute. It can be further classified into PS,TS, used respectively as a container for DVD and HDTV .
VOB
The audio/video container format for DVD, supports multi-video ,multi-track, and multi-title etc.
MP4 The audio/video container format for MPEG-4,based on QuickTime MOV ,and features many superiorities.
3GP 3GPP uses 3GP as a video format to transmit streaming media.
ASF
Windows Media applies ASF as its audio/video container ,to be used for transmitting streams, script included.
RM
Real Media uses RM to transmit streams
MOV
The audio/video container for QuickTime ,maybe the most powerful container at present. Besides many common technologies it supports, it even upholds virtual reality and java, an edge over its variations such as MP4 and 3GP.
WAV
A kind of audio container. People often refer to WAV as the unzipped PCM code, but as a matter of fact, WAV also includes other ACM zipping codes such as MP3.
MP3
MPEG Audio Layer 3 ,as has been mentioned above.
The knowledge about audio and video formats is numerous and jumbled ,and I’m here giving only some ABCs, and hopefully provide a thread to welcome more tech-savvy guys to add to the guide in order to help those still a bit confused.