The AVI file format is an Audio Video multimedia container file format that was introduced by Microsoft. It holds the audio and video data created and compressed using several codecs (Coders/Decoders) such as XVid and DivX. Since different codecs can be used to encode the AVI contents, the retrieving applications i.e. AVI players, should be able to open these only if they have the required codecs installed with which the AVI contents were created. Read More »

M4V file format, developed by Apple, is a video container optionally protected with Digital Rights Management (DRM) copy protection aiming to protect privacy or copy. Videos and audio tracks are wrapped around by container files to achieve indexing and organizing the streams for playback. In addition, containers also provide the feature of chapters similar to those on DVDs. M4V is used by Apple to encode videos in its iTunes Store. It protects unauthorized reproduction through Apple’s FairPlay copy protection by allowing M4V files to be played on only authorized computers having the accounts used for the purchase of the video. Read More »

Mov or QuickTime File format is multimedia container which is developed by Apple: contains one or more tracks, each track holds a particular type of data i.e. Video, Audio, text etc. Mov format is compatible both in Windows and Macintosh systems. Mov uses MPEG-4 coded for compression and tracks are maintained in objects called atoms which are placed in a hierarchical data structure. Brief History MPEG-4 file format has evolved from QuickTime format specification in 2001, which has also been approved by the International Organization for Standardization. Read More »

The Advanced Systems Format (ASF) is a digital multimedia container designed primarily for storing and transmitting media streams. Microsoft Windows Media Video (WMV) is the compressed video format and Microsoft Windows Media Audio (WMA) is the compressed audio format along with additional metadata in the ASF container developed by Microsoft. Once the wmv or wma files are encoded with Windows Media Video and Windows Media Audio codecs then they are represented with . Read More »