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About File Format
3GP - The mpeg4 based video format used in mobile terminals, like cell phones.
3ivx - An MPEG-4 toolkit that supports MPEG-4 Video, MPEG-4 Audio and the MP4 File Format.
AAC - Stands for Advanced Audio Coder. An audio-encoding standard for MPEG-2 that is not backward-compatible with MPEG-1 audio.
ASF - Stands for Advanced Streaming Format. stores audio and video information, and it is specially designed to run on networks like the Internet. ASP is a highly flexible and compressed format that contains streaming audio, video, slide shows, and synchronized events. When you use ASF files, content is delivered to you as a continuous flow of data. When an AVI file is compressed and converted to an ASF file, the file begins playing after only a few seconds.
AVI - Stands for Audio Video Interleaved, storing sound and moving pictures in RIFF format developed by Microsoft. An AVI file can use different codecs and formats so there is no set format for an AVI file unlike for example standard VCD video which sets a standard for resolution, bitrates, and codecs used.
CDA - CD Audio Track, audio files that are on CD media. You can play .cda files only from a CD-ROM. Often the CDA tracks are ripped to WAV or MP3 files.
CD DVD Rip - To take off the audio or video from a CD or DVD. Often CD Audio is "ripped" to MP3 WAV OGG VQF files or DVD video ripped to AVI MPEG DivX files.
DIVA - a powerful MPEG-1/MPEG-2 video converter for Mac OS X 10.2 or later. It uses QuickTime, MPEG, MOV, SMP, AltiVec, YUV, Cocoa, Quartz, XML and other amazingly great acronyms and buzzwords. It's also fast, high quality, and integrates extremely well with 3ivx D4 4.5, allowing it to perform automated 2-pass encoding with 3ivx.
DivX - a new format for digital video, much like MP3 is a format for digital music. DivX is the brand name of a patent-pending video compression technology created by DivX Networks, Inc., The DivX codec is based on the MPEG-4 compression standard. This codec is so advanced that it can reduce an MPEG-2 video (the same format used for DVD or Pay-Per-View) to ten percent of its original size.
DTS - Digital Theater Systems Digital Sound, A product of DTS, Inc., DTS is a multichannel audio compression format similar to Dolby Digital used in DVD-video discs, DVD-audio, 5.1 channel audio CDs, and some movie theaters. DTS differs from Dolby Digital in that it generally uses higher data rates and many have the opinion that DTS is better quality. DTS can only be on a DVD-video disc if accompanied by a Dolby Digital or LPCM track (for North America) or mpeg audio and LPCM (European Community) to ensure compatibility, because DVD players are only required to decode those standards in those regions.
DV - Digital Video, video captured to a PC from a digital camcorder, often through Firewire. There are two methods of storing DV video data, referred to in this article as type-1 and type-2. Both are stored usually in AVI files.
DVD - DVD once stood for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc, but now it just stands for DVD -- the next generation of optical disc storage technology. DVD is essentially a bigger, faster CD that can hold cinema-like video, better-than-CD audio, and computer data.
M3U - An .m3u file is a special type of metafile playlist that is used with MP3 files that have an .mp3 file extension. The .m3u file includes information about the location of the .m3u file on the computer and the properties of the file. An .m3u file is similar to the ASX playlist files.
MOV - QuickTime Content (.mov, .qt) a file format developed by Apple Computer to create, edit, publish, and view multimedia files. QuickTime supports video, animation, graphics, 3D and virtual reality (VR).
MP3 - is an acronym for MPEG-1 (or MPEG-2) Layer 3 audio encoding (it is not an acronym for MPEG-3). MP3 is a popular compression format used for audio files on computers and portable devices.
MP4 - is a new container format, a container format allows you to combine different multimedia streams into one single file. Multimedia containers are for example the well known AVI, MPEG , Matroska, OGM. MP4 is the global file extension for the official container format defined in the MPEG-4 standard. MP4 is streamable and supports all kinds of multimedia content, multiple audio-, video-, subtitlestreams, pictures, variable-framerates, -bitrates, -samplerates...) and advanced content like 2D and 3D animated graphics, user interactivity, DVD-like menus.
MPEG - An ISO/ITU standard for compressing video offering lossy compression technique (some data of the original image is lost during the compression).
SVCD - stands for 'Super VideoCD'. A SVCD is very similiar to a VCD, it has the capacity to hold about 35-60 minutes on 74/80 min CDs of very good quality full-motion MPEG-2 video along with up to 2 stereo audio tracks and also 4 selectable subtitles. A SVCD can be played on many standalone DVD Players and of course on all computers with a DVD-ROM or CD-ROM drive with the help of a software based decoder / player.
VCD - stands for 'Video Compact Disc' and basically it is a CD that contains moving pictures and sound. If you're familiar with regular audio/music CDs, then you will know what a VCD looks like. A VCD has the capacity to hold up to 74/80 minutes on 650MB/700MB CDs respectively of full-motion video along with quality stereo sound. VCDs use an encoding standard called MPEG-1 to store the video and audio. A VCD can be played on almost all standalone DVD Players and of course on all computers with a DVD-ROM or CD-ROM drive with the help of a software based decoder / player.
VIDEO_TS - The UDF file name used for DVD-Video directory on a DVD disc volume. Files under this directory name contain pointers to the sectors on the disc which hold the program streams.
WMA - Windows Media Audio.
WMF - Windows Media Format files are audio/video files encoded with the Windows Media Encoder, providing high quality and media security for streaming and download-and-play applications on PCs, set-top boxes, and portable devices. Windows Media Format comprises Windows Media Audio and Video codecs, an optional integrated digital rights management (DRM) system, and a file container.
WMP - Windows Media Player, a multimedia audio and video player bundled with the Windows Operating System. The player can play many different formats natively including WAV, ASF, WMF, MPEG-1 and can play many types of AVI files if the codec is installed including Divx. WMP can also play MPEG-2 with a third party codec installed (like the ones installed by software DVD players such as WinDVD and PowerDVD).
WMV - Windows Media file with Audio and/or Video (WMV): You can use a WMV file either to download and play files or to stream content. The WMV file format is similar to the ASF file format.
XVCD - eXtended VCD, XVCD has same features as VCD but it is possible to use higher bitrates and higher resolution to get higher video quality. XVCD is basically everything that uses MPEG-1 video, is not within the VCD standard, and burned in "VCD" Mode on a CD-R or CD-R(W). XVCD can be played on some hardware VCD or DVD players and many computers with appropriate software.
XviD - is an ISO MPEG-4 compliant video codec. It's not a product but an open source project which is developed and maintained by people around the world.
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