I’ve been always interested in what is hiding behind all the video and audio information we watch every day on our computers. So I decided to dig a bit on this topic and figure out what different file formats exists.

After investigating this topic a little I came to a conclusion that knowing them all is just impossible since there are hundreds exist. It looks like at the birth of computer video and audio every company introduced its own file format. And even though only some survived there are still quite a lot of them. Here is a short list: MP4, Quicktime, MP3, AVI, DIVX, BIN, WAV, WMA, MP2, FLV and many many more.

It comes out that the most popular audio and video format right now is MP4. According to this File Extension MP4 page ^[1] this format is a container format which means it can store multiple streams of information in a single file. One of the reasons it became so popular because it was very easy to merge audio, video, subtitles into one highly compressed file.

Another media format which recently became extremely popular is 3GP. This format is used in cell phones and other mobile devices to store audio and video information. Read some details about File Extension 3GP ^[2]. In short it is also a container file format but specifically tuned for mobile devices.

Well that’s not the end of it. File Extension FLV ^[3] is used for Flash Video Files. This format was derived from Flash format we like so much. But instead of cool cartoons it is used to store videos.

Another extension which I found to be very popular for media files is file extension TORRENT ^[4]. Even though this file extension was not designed to store audio or video files it is mostly used to transfer audio and video information through the internet. Lots of the information in this format is pirated and that’s why media companies are trying to shut down BitTorrent networks. So far they hadn’d had any luck in it and TORRENT is one of the most popular formats for media information distribution.