Container format

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A container format is a computer file format that can contain various types of data, compressed by means of standardized codecs. The container file is used to identify and interleave the different data types. Simpler container formats can contain different types of audio codecs, while more advanced container formats can support audio, video, subtitles, chapters, and meta-data (tags) - along with the synchronization information needed to play back the various streams together.

Some containers are exclusive to audio:

• WAV (RIFF file format, widely used on Windows platform)
• AIFF (AIFF file format, widely used on Mac OS platform)

Other flexible containers can hold many types of audio and video, as well as other media. The most popular multi-media containers are:

• AVI (the obsolete standard Microsoft Windows container, also based on RIFF)
• MOV (standard QuickTime container)
• MPEG-2 TS (acronym of Transport Stream, standard container for digital broadcasting)
• MP4 (standard container for the MPEG-4 multimedia portfolio)
• Ogg (standard container for Xiph.org codecs)
• ASF (standard container for Microsoft WMA and WMV)
• RealMedia (standard container for RealVideo and RealAudio)
• Matroska (not standard for any codec or system, but it is an open standard).
• 3gp (used by many mobile phones)

There are many other container formats, such as NUT, MPEG, MXF, ratDVD, SVI,and DivX Media Format.

See the Comparison of container formats for details regarding these formats.

Issues

The differences between various container formats arise from five main issues:

1. Popularity; how widely supported a container is.
2. Overhead. This is the difference in file-size between two files with the same content in a different container. For a two-hour film, when in AVI, the file may be up to 3MB larger than when in Matroska.
3. Support for advanced codec functionality. Older formats such as AVI do not support new codec features like B-frames, VBR audio, VFR natively, although the format may be "hacked" to add support, creating compatibility problems.
4. Support for advanced content, such as chapters, subtitles, meta-tags, user-data.
5. Support of streaming media

See also

• Comparison of container formats
• Open source codecs and containers

Related links

• [Video File Formats]
• [DivX Media Format]

 

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