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Article on Digital File Formats – Part 1

There are so many file formats for video that is can become confusing to those new to the industry. Instead of wasting time looking for the “perfect” file format, you should spend your time looking at the existing ones and learn which ones are most suitable for which situation.

There is not perfect file format. Some a better for some situations than others, digital video is huge, both the industry and the file size itself. Major vendors like Microsoft, Apple and others all designed video formats that compressed the large video files in different ways. Because of this they became incompatible as each vendors player couldn’t recreate a video compressed by their competitors format.

This may have been intentional or not, depends on your view, but the upshot is that many vendor produced video players won’t play other vendors videos. Fortunately independent studios, and software developers did the honorable thing and produced video players that understands most if not all proprietary formats. They use software keys called codec’s which is like set of instructions on how to decode a particular format.

These independent video players leveled the playing field somewhat until the vendors got wise and included the codec’s in their own players so the formats could be decoded in each other’s players. This was the digital version of the VHS vs. Betamax format war in the 1980’s.

Now most players will play most file formats, and if a particular player doesn’t, there are plenty of free alternative players on the internet that will. My personal favorite is VLC, which is free and open source. It plays just about any file format out there, and can even play incomplete or damaged files. Other viable alternatives are Winamp, MPlayer, and KMPlayer. All of these video players can convert and read most file formats including proprietary ones, and all are free.

When recording your own videos, it’s best to stick to these popular video formats in order to increase its compatibility across the widest audience. So learning which is most appropriate for what situation is important.

One of the most popular digital file formats around in the .avi. This is a Microsoft proprietary format that has been around for a while. This is an uncompressed format which means the file sizes are still large. An .avi file is normally used at the beginning of a production rather than the end. It is most popular because it is one of the oldest digital formats so it highly compatible.

Another Microsoft format is the .wmv file which is a Windows Media File. These are highly compressed, so the file size is manageable, but because of that compression, the quality suffers somewhat. This format is often used in viral emailed videos or some online videos. Because of their size, and the fact video over the internet can be ragged anyway, it doesn’t matter if the quality isn’t the best.

Naples Video Production is a post from: Fort Myers Web Design