Container format
A container format (from English container , container ') loaded in the information technology a data structure fixed, possibly with the various individual data streams formats to a data stream (for example, a container file can be merged) (multiplexing). The possibilities of different container formats differ greatly from one another. The simplest case is to combine several files into one archive file , as is the case with the TAR format , for example .
Building on this, the term container format is often used in such a way that the data it contains result in a meaningful whole - for example, to merge video data with audio data in such a way that they result in a playable film or to combine text information with images and other information to create a Composite document . Well-known and often used media container formats, especially for the joint storage of the image and sound data of a movie in a single data stream, are MP4 ( file extension .mp4), Matroska (.mkv, .mka), DivX (.divx) and the outdated AVI (.avi).
Media container
Containers usually contain data in various formats . The popular AVI container can, for example, contain an MPEG-4 video track created with the Xvid codec and an MP3 audio track created with LAME . Some container formats can also contain additional data such as subtitles, menu structures or additional audio tracks. Other container formats, however, can only contain audio data. For example, RIFF-WAVE containers usually contain an uncompressed audio track (mostly in PCM coding); MP3-coded audio data are also possible.
A multiplexer takes over the merging of the audio and video tracks in a container of a certain format . When playing, the tracks are separated again by a demultiplexer (also called a splitter ) so that they can then be decoded by the respective decoder.
Audio / video container formats
Audio / video container formats can contain at least one audio and one video stream. Some formats also allow the embedding of subtitles ( e.g. VOB , MP4 , MKV ), menu structures (e.g. VOB, MP4, DMF) or other content.
| developer | format | File suffix |
Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3GPP | 3gp | .3gp | a format optimized for mobile phones based on MP4. |
| Adobe Inc. | Flash video | .flv | a format optimized for web streaming. Up until Flash 6 , Macromedia used the Sorenson video format. From version 8, VP6 was used by TrueMotion . This was followed by VP7 and from 2008 VP8 . |
| Apple | QuickTime | .mov, .qt | the container format of the playback software of the same name. It contained the Sorenson video format in previous versions and today it contained AVC . |
| Blu-ray Disc Association | BDAV MPEG-2 Transport Stream | .m2ts, .mts | The container format for Blu-ray Disc video. The format is a modified MPEG-2 transport stream. |
| DivX Networks | DivX Media Format | .divx | is based on AVI and contains MPEG-4 ASP video streams encoded with DivX . |
| DVD forum | Video Object | .vob | the container format for DVD-Video and mostly MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 compressed. |
| Enhanced VOB | .evo | the container format for HD DVD video. | |
| WebM | .webm | The WebM standard consists of the video format VP8 or its successor VP9 and the audio format Vorbis or Opus in a container format based on a subset of Matroska. | |
| Matroska | Matroska | .mkv, .mka | an open source container format for almost all available video formats. |
| Microsoft | Advanced streaming format | .asf, .wmv, .wma |
Part of the Windows Media Framework , is natively supported by all current Windows versions and contains proprietary video formats from Microsoft. |
| Audio video interleave | .avi | an older RIFF -based format which, despite its technically limited possibilities, is still widely used today. | |
| MPEG | MPEG-1 system stream | .mpg, .mpeg | the official container for the MPEG-1 video format. Older VCD formats mainly used it. It is becoming less and less important. |
| MPEG-2 program stream | .mpg, .mpeg, .ps |
almost identical to the MPEG-1 System Stream, but has a much better resolution and faster transport. | |
| MPEG-2 transport stream | .ts, .tsp | like DVB, a container format optimized for error-prone transmission paths. | |
| MP4 | .mp4 | the standard container format for MPEG-4 ASP / AVC video streams and is based on the Quicktime container format. | |
| RealNetworks | RealMedia | .rm, .rmvb, .ra, .ram |
a container for RealAudio and RealVideo streams. The new codecs from Realmedia are based on MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 and a G2 audio compression that is similar to MP3 . |
| Xiph.org | Ogg | .ogg .ogv | the official container for Ogg formats. |
| Ogg Media | .ogm | is a hack of the Ogg container that has been expanded to include a few options. | |
| unknown | MXF | .mxf | Material Exchange Format. Very strict container. Mainly used in a professional broadcast environment. |
| OMFI | .omf | an Avid format used in TV editing systems. It is essentially based on MP2 -compressed or even uncompressed AVI. | |
| DV | .dv | Digital video, developed for editing systems. |
Other container formats
| developer | format | File extension (s) | Type | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Adobe Inc. | Portable Document Format | Compound document | for text, images and binary data | |
| Tagged Image File Format | .tif | Raster graphics | ||
| Apple | Audio Interchange File Format | .aif, .aiff, .aifc, .ief, .snd | Audio | based on the Interchange File Format (IFF) |
| Electronic Arts | ILBM | photos | based on the Interchange File Format (IFF) | |
| ANIM | Animations | based on the Interchange File Format (IFF) | ||
| FTXT | text | based on the Interchange File Format (IFF) | ||
| Microsoft | REEF WAVE | .wav | Audio | based on the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) |
| Microsoft Exchange Message | .msg | for messages with attachments, calendar, etc. | ||
| Microsoft Outlook Personal Store | .pst | for all messages in MSG format | ||
| Virtual hard disk | .vhd | Virtual disk | virtual hard disks and a. for Microsoft Virtual PC | |
| Sun Microsystems | Au | .au, .snd | Audio | |
| VMware | VMDK | .vmdk | Virtual disk | virtual disks for VMware - Virtualization Products |
Note: Audio-only container formats cannot contain video data.