Movie Formats
Table of Contents
see also: Index
Overview
Popular movie formats are usually “container formats”: whether a movie can be played on a particular platform depends on the codecs that have been used. QuickTime is one such format developed by Apple Computer Inc. QuickTime movies usually have the file extension “.mov”. Additional software (like the free QuickTime player for Windows) might be required. WMV is a container format developed by Microsoft Inc.
QuickTime (PNG)
QuickTime MOV-file that contains a stream of lossless PNG-images. Available on Windows XP/Vista/7 and Mac OS X.
QuickTime (RLE)
QuickTime MOV-file that contains a stream of lossless run length encoded images. Available on Windows XP/Vista/7 and Mac OS X.
QuickTime (RAW)
QuickTime MOV-file that contains a stream of lossless raw images. Available on Windows XP/Vista/7 and Mac OS X. This codec produces huge files.
QuickTime (JPGA)
QuickTime MOV-file with lossy motion jpeg compression. Available on Windows XP/Vista/7 and Mac OS X.
QuickTime (H.264)
QuickTime MOV-file, Available on Windows XP/Vista/7 and Mac OS X. The compression is lossy, very efficient and of high quality.
Ogg/Theora (High Quality)
This movie format encodes the video using the Theora codec and writes the result into an ogg-file, high quality.
Ogg/Theora (Low Quality)
This movie format encodes the video using the Theora codec and writes the result into an ogg-file, low quality.
WMV (HiFi)
This movie format produces WMV-movies with a good quality setting. Available on Windows XP/Vista/7.
WMV (LoFi)
This movie format produces WMV-movies which are optimized for a small file size (there is a price to pay in image fidelity). Available on Windows XP/Vista/7.
MP4 (H.264)
This movie format uses a H.264 encoder and writes the movie into a MP4-container format. Available on Windows 7. Compression is lossy, high quality.