Explaining Digital Video: Formats, Codecs & Containers

Digital video formats, codecs and containers explained, including MP4, MOV, MXF, H.264, H.265, ProRes, DNxHD, H.262, M-JPEG, 3GP, MTS, AVCHD, XAVC-I, XAVC-S, XF-AVC, AS-11 DPP and DCP.

You may also be interested in my videos:

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Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:34 Formats, Codecs & Containers
03:27 Codecs
07:47 Containers
10:32 Formats
12:55 Format Evolution

[FatNorthernBigot]

This is a subject I've taken for granted for decades, without actually understanding it. Thanks for this!

[simonkent]

My goodness you've shown up my ignorance! That was a fantastically informative video.

[CompleteAnimation]

This topic is so complex, and this video only scratches the surface. You could literally make it your career to explain everything about digital video.

[shinningraj]

I feel very fortunate to be here. Your tonality, pace with which you uttered, the information you imparted, so on and so I can say, but AWESOME. Needs more of you.
Thank you for your input!

And LONG LIVE!!

[garyf]

You put a lot of time and energy into a very good presentation. Thank You!

[Supernaut]

This clearly explains why we haven’t heard from alien life as they don’t know what format to use with us, or they are so confused they gave up.

[nitinb]

After 20 years in photography, I need to go back to school after watching this tutorial. Thanks a lot.

[NorthernKitty]

This is by FAR the best, briefest and most comprehensive simplification of digital video formats I've seen... fantastic job, thank you!! 🥰 From now on, anytime someone asks me to explain it - which I do very poorly - I can send them here.

[paranoidrodent]

Scrolling the comments, I see I was hardly alone in raising an eyebrow at the absence of Matroska/.mkv containers. I have also seen the numerous replies from our charming host regarding his focus on the production/editing side of things. If I might be so bold, Chris, could I suggest the idea of a future video that dives deeper into video containers including the pros and cons of each relatively popular type. It is not inherently obvious to a novice why one might choose MP4, MKV, MOV, the venerable AVI or whatnot over the other options. MKV clearly has a strong user base with video that has multiple language options, for example, but understanding why would be quite interesting. Why do those unique Android containers when MP4 exists? That sort of thing. Great video as always!

[jotatsu]

EC: Mentions common containers
MKV: *Sad noises*.

[peterhaskew]

This is definitely one of those videos which falls into the category of "Things I didn't realise I didn't know", or - more precisely - "Things about which I didn't realise how much there is not to know"! By that I mean both the things you've explained in the video and all the questions which arise from it because it's quite clear you've only really scratched the surface!

I wrote a paper in college 16 years ago exactly about this topic. MP4 was a new format/container at the time, using mostly H.264 (H.265 didn't exist yet), HD files were almost non-existent, and most everything was SD with a few 480p or 576p videos. 3GP was also kind of new at the time (used in mobile phone videos). Good times...

[jsimpso]

As a heavy user of various digital video/media solutions, it was certainly a pleasure to see a refresher on all of this stuff. Just thought I'd share a couple additions from my experience:
1) Media containers like MP4 can not only contain several audio streams and subtitle streams but also several video streams too! Some of the videos I encode have three or four different video tracks showing playback from different perspectives.
2) Media containers can have any or all of the items you listed (e.g. video streams, the audio stream(s), and subtitles). Some projects I've worked on use MP4 but simply contain a bunch of audio streams which is super handy if you're trying to transcribe audio from an interview and have a combination of combined and individual speaker's audio, enabling the transcriber to swap between the various speakers. Since it's all contained within that mp4 file it's very easy for them to work with.
3) Containers can also contain a bunch of other meta-data that may be handy for some projects. For instance, did you know that you can label each audio stream, video stream and transcription track, enabling viewers to clearly tell what they viewing?
4) Not all media playback software handles these containers the same way. I'd encourage anyone to try opening an MP4 file containing several audio, video, and transcript tracks in QuickTime and tell me what they see. Compare this with VLC which lets the user choose which audio, video, and closed captioning tracks they want to see.
5) Similar to the roll of 35mm film you held up at the end, modern-day video can also be created by threading together a bunch of still images. Some of the videos I'm creating right now use tens of thousands of ultra-high-resolution screenshots to put together 4K video at about 90 frames-per-second.
6) Although there are a number of great video editing tools out there, one tool I am using a lot is FFmpeg (from the terminal). It lets you do all sorts of stuff from creating multi-track audio MP4 files to creating multi-track audio, video, and closed captioning videos with sophisticated overlays. The best part is since it's a command-line tool you can use shell scripting to automate the whole video encoding workflow. Instead of spending hours in handbrake or other tools going project by project to define a workflow and wait for the processing to resume, I can write a clever script run it overnight on my computer and when I get up all the media files are encoded for me to view.

[RiggsTek]

MKV (Matroska) container is widely used too :)

[MovieMajorMarvin]

Just graduated Film School and have never been explained this stuff so well in any of my editing classes. I took notes during this video. Great stuff.

[bigsky]

Fascinating topic. I remember learning years ago that MPEG video from a source such as digital satellite and cable used (perhaps still do) the interframe compression mechanism, where it would only compress the moving parts of a video and not the still parts of the video. Too much movement on the screen and you can begin to see blocks of video (also known as pixelation) on the screen. A good example is the New Years celebration in Times Square with all the confetti raining down on the crowd below. I believe YouTube also uses the interframe compression as well.

The DV tape demonstration in the video really cleared up a lot of confusion I had between the codec and the container. Very well done Chris, thank you sir!

[gojohnniegogo]

Here I am again with my cuppa. Sitting down with a brew to watch the new EC video is a habit I very much enjoy! The only time I have issues with codecs is on DVD players as the selection of formats supported is so random & varied. As far as Windows goes, at least you can download VLC or MPC-HC and pretty much forget about what format your files are in. This is one respect that things have definitely changed for the better!

[anthonymccarthy]

As a comment said earlier, I never really understood anything about this. Another excellent explanation, minimal jargon, clear, well planned and, as is rarely the case, useful.

[strawberriebabieex]

Usually I understand various data formats but I have to admit regarding video data I have been in the dark. I didnt realize how much i was confusing codecs versus containers until I heard your explanation. very useful to know in that more highly compressed video formats are stressing our computers more now when editing. Thanks for the enlightening explanation!

[ramoncordova]

This is the best video on formats and codecs I’ve ever seen! It’s so clear and concise. I now have a WAY better understanding on the subject. I’m saving it a a reference to whenever I have questions or need a refresher. Thank you SO much!