Explaining Digital Video: Formats, Codecs & Containers
Вставка
- Опубліковано 13 чер 2024
- 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.
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More videos on computing and related topics can be found at:
/ explainingcomputers
You may also like my ExplainingTheFuture channel at: / explainingthefuture
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:34 Formats, Codecs & Containers
03:27 Codecs
07:47 Containers
10:32 Formats
12:55 Format Evolution - Наука та технологія
This is a subject I've taken for granted for decades, without actually understanding it. Thanks for this!
Same.
n00bs
@@aryanmaddox1749 spam
@@codycast Yes, but what about my mother's virtue? Surely there's comments to be made about that?
@@FatNorthernBigot ?
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.
So true!
My goodness you've shown up my ignorance! That was a fantastically informative video.
EC: Mentions common containers
MKV: *Sad noises*.
Agree
"FLV" was also missing which is also kind off common
My focus here was largely on acquisition and production. I can't imagine anybody shooting or editing in MKV. :)
@@ExplainingComputers possible follow up video on format conversion and what's lost in the process?
Almost all the vids on my NAS are .mkv
handbrake + MKV was the breakfast for fansubbers back in the day
After 20 years in photography, I need to go back to school after watching this tutorial. Thanks a lot.
Thanks for watching. Look out for the follow-up video "Explaining Image File Formats" this Sunday. :)
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.
You put a lot of time and energy into a very good presentation. Thank You!
Thanks.
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.
Excellent!
There’s more truth in that than you think !
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!
Thanks for this! There are indeed possibilities for follow-up videos. :)
Definitely curious why MKV was left out. MKV is commonly used, open source, supports more options for audio and captions, and supports higher compression than MP4.
@@autouzi Me too, I came here specifically to understand MKV files because that is the default storage for OBS and I want to find an efficient way to upload my twitch streams to UA-cam, as well as the best file to convert in order to edit with Premiere Pro (because Pr unfortunately does not support the MKV file format).
@@autouzi I thought the same too it wasnt mentioned. It is a very common format. As for being higher compression than MP4, to be honest I haven't really noticed any difference, though programmes like Adobe Premiere don't support MKV, but you can remux MKV files to MP4 (OBS Studio can do this). I've noticed that you hardly hear of MPEG2 anymore, even avi you rarely hear of. I have a TV recorder machine called Argus which records in the .mts format that you would normally see on consumer grade HD camcorders. The recorded quality is superb, no compression I can tell and looks like the original, but oddly produces very small file sizes, but I think this is down to the bitrate it was recorded/captured at.
@@DialecticRed You are better off with DaVinci Resolve. Also, it's cheaper & more efficient in my opinion.
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...
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.
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!
I really wonder who had the glorious idea to throw in "I-Frame" as an abbreviation when we're trying to distinguish between interframe and intraframe.
People who don't use the name "interframe"
I frames are ‘intra coded’ - they can stand alone...
P are predictive, only containing the detail needed to render between I-frames when running forward...
B are ‘backward’ details...
The complexity of the GOP (Group Of Pictures) determines the ‘temporal’ resolution of the stream...
The other compression element is ‘spatial’ compression, which condenses the image to be rendered within the desired XY image space.
in professional video broadcast, for MPEG2, h264 and HEVC you have I, B and P frames. An I frame is a fully encoded frame, think of it like a JPG image. P and B frames only contain the 'differences' between I frames. So if you had an I frame once per second, and you are doing 25 frames per second, you would get an I, then some Bs and Ps, then a second later an I.
In light compression, you generally get all I frames (no Bs or Ps) so you don't have to think about I frames. Even if you do have I, B and P, if you use something like Premiere as an editor, it will render all the frames fully for editing (so Premiere will take the I frame, and use that information to render the B and P frames as 'I' frames so you can d frame accurate edits).
MKV (Matroska) container is widely used too :)
Indeed.
Yeah, i was surprised it's not even mentioned, i use it for movies since about 6 years - mkvtoolnix rocks. :D
It's like second after mp4
Nothing against MKV, but I wonder what the benefit of that container is over say MP4? In addition, not all media players support the MKV format whereas there is typically universal support for MP4 and MOV.
@@j2simpso Easy to manipulate,
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!
:)
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.
Congratulations on your graduation! :)
That speaks much about the level of quality that school is holding...
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.
And then there's the mkv container?
MKV god!
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 UA-cam 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!
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!
Glad it was helpful.
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!
after many years, i never knew file extensions are not exactly the formats. thanks for great content
That was no-doubt the best video I've seen on explaining image file formats I've seen to-date. Thank you Mr. Barnatt. You are a treasure!
The accessibility and simplicity of this presentation is a work of art. Beautiful!
Excellent Video Chris, I've been messing about with video files for years and didn't know most of what your video has taught me today :)
Great video, clear, concise, comprehensive and informative, as usual 👌
Much appreciated!
Thank you
Was looking for something precise like this.
Love and respect from India🇮🇳
You've made it all sound not only clear but sensible! I hadn't appreciated the difference between codecs and containers. Thanks very much!
I did not know hardly any of this subject before. Thank Chris for your clear and complete explanation on the topic. I now have the confidence I needed to handle the video files from my (over the air TV) DVR, which uses 'mts' format. I'd assumed that an app like VLC would play the files, but it's good to know the structure behind it. Thanks for another great video.
I already knew this but it's always fun and interesting to hear someone else explain it.
Who remembers Real player (rm) and Windows media (wmv)?
Or DivX and XviD!
What about the MOD format, back in 1987?
MPC-HC, anyone?
@@MJ-uk6lu mpc-hc no longer in development :(
Sir,
The way you present these topic in a succinct manner is a testament to your great teaching ability.
Thank you for this channel sir.We love your work
That was a LOT of information. Makes me appreiciate Video Conversion/Recording Software much more.
This went perfectly with a cuppa tea in my new Explaining Computers mug. Thanks for another great video!
This video feels like something I should have researched some time the last 20 years myself. Awesome work, thanks for making it!
I’ve watched several videos trying to understand this. Yours is the clearest and helped me a lot. Thank you.
In Linux we have various tools that make recognizing these things a pretty easy. At the first stage a command named 'file' this will display what the file is and read out the required info, if say the format is not something you have a player / codec for then you go straight for FFMPeg and convert it to something more friendly.
There is also VP8 and VP9 codec / formats ( see wiki's for more info ) among other audio codecs formats like Ogg over MP3 which are preferred as shown codecs here come with license entanglements that are frowned upon due to overreach of DRM among other things ( Looking at you Hollywood ).
I think as far as a player goes VLC is pretty much the go to on all platforms as it supports any and all codecs / formats usually out of the box.
Excellent: I was hoping somebody would post such a comment to save me the job of doing it. I always go for ffmpeg and vlc to sort out videos. One common thing that often needs to be fixed is the frame rate. Videos are often provided at, say, 50 fps, but they are simply 25 fps videos with each frame shown twice, so you can halve the file size with no loss of quality using ffmpeg's -r flag. This has the added benefit of cutting the processing power needed to display the video, often accompanied by a reduction in fan noise.
This was great. So much to learn and understand here. Thank You For This.
This is the new standard for explain video formats. Thank you.
Holy moly, you stretched my brain again and I will have to go back and watch this video several times because you dropped me into a deep dark black hole. I have had a camera in my hands since I was 8 years old and I thought I knew the formats clearly but clearly I do not. Thank you for a most professional presentation and you have stretched my brain almost to the breaking point. =_=
Great info, now I know a lot more than a few minutes ago.
Quite possibly the clearest explanation I've seen on this tricky subject. Well done.
Thanks! :)
Companies have fallen in love with letters and numbers added on to product titles... And it seems to be " the more the merrier". Thank you for adding clarity to the chaos of characters! Wonderful explanation!
Thanks Chris! You have an amazing knack of making videos about everything I need to know!!
Fab explanation Chris, wish you'd been training when I was in broadcast television!
Great Video and thanks, I have learnt something new this afternoon even if it did cause my container "brain" to heat up considerably.
You definitely have one of the most useful channels. Thank you sir, you are a real teacher.
Brilliant thanks Christopher.... the clearest explanation of this confusing subject matter I have seen.
Part two is due! Complementing on VP9 and licensing.
Oh, and MKV ;)
You always put so much effort into your videos. Truly a rarity on UA-cam these days.
Absolutely brilliant Chris. Thanks ever so much. Video formats have baffled me for years with various devices.
This video gave us the in-depth knowledge of the video outputs we see all around. Awesome. Have an amazing week Chris.
Absolutely love every one of your videos and to be honest - you could present a video how I was conceived by my parents and I’d still be interested!!!
Can’t wait for more videos (as long as not the conceiving video lol)
Another informative video...
✅✅✅✅✅✅✅
I love these videos. It has that no nonsense, let's get on with it approach so reminiscent of teaching computer tv programmes in the 80's
Informative video, as always. I watched this to refresh my memory about these things. Got the apple side of the story as a bonus. Thanks for making these videos. Amazing voice and delivery as always. You are like the Geoff Boycott of UA-cam to me!
Where is the mention of the world's most widespread "open format" MKV container?
I do state that other containers exist, but that I am only going to cover those on the initial table. My focus here is on digital video aquistion and production, and MKV is not an acquisition or production container.
@@ExplainingComputers but it is open.... :-)
Thanks, that was very informative. Would you be able to follow up with something about how audio in included in the containers. There seems to be an equally bewildering situation there what with bit rates and multiple channels. And for icing on the cake how about demystifying how all videos are streamed?
Hi Graham. You are right, there were possibilities for other videos here. I will see how popular (or otherwise) this video is . . .
Would also appreciate a video on containers and audio.👍 Perhaps include subtitles?
@@ExplainingComputers for fun see '0612 TV w/ NERDfirst FFMPEG Advanced Techniques Pt1 - Advanced Filters' and his part two ^_-
Another great video on basic computing that no one explains as well. Love the DV tape analogy to explain containers.
For me, so much new to learn in this presentation... Had to watch it several times... Time well spent (both for the presentation and viewing). Thank you!
Very useful information presented clearly.
Thanks!
It is worth to mention about mkv and old avi conteners. UA-cam is testing a new AV1 codec. AV2 and H266 codecs are in development. And lastly. I think a lot people probably remember illegal DivX 3 alfa codec stolen from Microsoft. I do remember this time a years ago. If you had dvd-rom drive or dvd-rw you could rip (still can) dvd video to avi with xvid or DivX 5 to single cd 700mb. 4,38gb or more with DVDDL to one single CD. Best regards!
Agreed. My focus here was on acquisition and production.
@@ExplainingComputers okay so maybe you will make part 2 in near future. I think this topic is interesting.
One of the best explanations yet.
Comprehensive and clearly explaind ! Well done !!!
Thank You for making this Video !!! Matroska (.mkv) is a media container that's kinda popular in the opensource community as well.
Nice stuff. I was fighting with this several years ago when I was in Nokia. The phone supported “MP4”, but as you said this is just a container.
An area I think you skiped is the Audio codec. The contain includes also Audio and this also comes in various formats (AAC, MP3, etc).
If you get this wrong, no sound...
Also the MKV container is imortant as it can contain several items. Like multiple audio or subtitle track.
By the way, in Denmark we broadcast in TS with H.264 video and AAC audio.
I believe MKV was also the only real container choice for multiple _video_ tracks back when I was comparing containers many years ago. (I don't know if more containers support that now, and I might be wrong about that anyway! :p)
I imagine that's a very rarely used feature, with multiple audio and subtitle tracks being more common, but weren't DVDs hyped, at launch, as supporting multiple camera angles that the viewer could switch between on demand? I don't recall that ever really being used, but the idea is there! 😹
I could imagine something like OBS having the option of saving all/several video inputs/scenes as separate tracks in the same container when recording, along with all/several audio tracks, so that everything was in the same place for any future editing, and all tracks should(?) be correctly synced up.
But I doubt video editors have much support for multiple video tracks in one container (though I hope I'm wrong!), so OBS recording like that wouldn't be too useful...
MKV also supports "attachments" - arbitrary embedded files - which can sometimes be useful!
It's also TS with H.264 and AAC in the UK. I think he quoted the preferred format for delivery of material to the broadcaster by a production house. lol
By far the best explanation of codecs I’ve seen. Thank you so much for this!
I disappeared down this rabbit hole of research once. Your explanation was much simpler to understand, as when you add in the audio codecs, the formats becomes a veritable fruit machine of combinations. All I wanted to know was how to store my DVD's on a NAS. I wasn't expecting a headache :)
use the Linux version of MakeMKV ,their big 'single' files though, buy more drives for your openmediavault , and/or use an ffmpeg script to off line recode them 'once' for everything on your lan, simples ^_~
Instant like before I've even watched the video 👍
Fantastic!
Watched it. Can I like again :)
Thank you so much!... Never knew about codec+container concept.
Great breakdown, Thanks for the brevity and no filler take.
Probably the best educational videos on UA-cam
Thanks for explaining this very confusing subject. I find it difficult to produce videos that all mutually compatible with computers, youtube and DVDs. What plays perfectly on Computers i.e MP4s does not play on all DVD players. Some of the older DVD players will not play MP4 videos so I have to make in video in more than one format to get it to play on multiple people's devices. This certainly helps to clean up some of the confusion.
Looking forward to h.266
It's so strange not to see mkv container
Another OUTSTANDING Video ...
This is the best video I have seen on video formats
Thanks Chris
This is the best video ever made on explaining codec and containers. I was totally confused after I saw Raspberry Pi 4 documentation and it stated H.264 decode/encode and H.265 encode. Thank you Explaining Computers.
Now I know I'm uploading to UA-cam in an appropriate format.
I never even knew there was a format that supported transparency(Alpha channel) till recent.
Another beautifully crafted video. Thanks Chris.
Now everything seems to be much more clearer. Thanks for this video!
Why no .MKV (matroska) among popular containers?! New Samsung tvs come without .AVI support but with .MKV support. In fact, MKV is the most usable and convenient container when you want separate audio tracks, nested tracks like subtitles in various languages and so on...
My focus here was on acquisition and production. I did note early on that lots of other codecs and containers were in use! :)
@@ExplainingComputers It might be useful to explain and contrast that with what we see in userland, once all that acquisition and production are done and sent to our screens.
Btw, what about mkv, webm, etc? Aren't they important?
MKV and WebM are both containers, the latter intended for online use, as the name implies. Important depends on what areas of application you are working in! :) This video is focused on video acquisition, production and distribution.
@@ExplainingComputers
Oh, I see.
I learned about them when I started using ytdl app. It lets you download videos in higher resolution ( 1080, etc. )
@@ExplainingComputers webM is a container for VP8 or VP9 codecs afaik, I don't know if it can be used for other codecs. I missed the video mentioning these open formats plus AV1.
@@ExplainingComputers Currently if one downloads a UA-cam video, it always arrives as an MP4, but very old vids can arrive a WebM, AVI, MKV, and one came down the wire in dozens of fragments with some other extension that YT-DL took all day to repack into MKV files. Standards, so many to choose from! Thanks for the info; I had no idea what was going on in there, and now have my very first clue. :D
@@Reziac Actually you can easily download WebM, AVI video streams from most (if not all) newer youtube videos with youtube-dl or other software such as Aria2c for example. Both video and audio streams are downloaded separately then merged using ffmpeg to a desired container ( i mostly use MKV or WebM) depending on what video (resolution)/audio (quality) needed.
A ton of information packed into one simple video (on a complex topic). Thanks for the explanation and the time spent on it.
This is why I love this channel.
Chris aka video wikipedia. Thank you for that.
I export my videos in webm format...small in sizes with good quality...
Just what I needed a Headache on a Sunday morning. Thanks as always
Killer presentation friend. I paused throughout to stop and take a full page of notes. Fascinating and concise. Thanks for filling in the gaps in my knowledge!
Thank you, very informative. But how about the other formats/codecs? I mean divx, mkv, Xvid, indeo, etc? A history of digital video would be interesting indeed.
I remember a small utility Gspot that allowed to tune the combination of codecs used to view a video. with most players the video was green,flipped, black or interleaved but with that GSpot I managed to see it
I believe divx and Xvid are quite similar to MPEG line of codecs.
I think mkv is used more in consumer side of things as well; the video seems to focus more on capturing and editing side.
@@muche6321 I remember seeing a camcorder that had Divx logo and Pinnacle Studio (8 or 9) used to import and edit Divx encoded videos. Of course those were more home/consumer oriented but however they existed as option to mpg/mpeg at the time, before AVC.
Welcome! you normal premier pro Learner
Thank you Chris. Another brilliantly presented video. You never disappoint.
Well done Chris. Great job of explaining a confusing topic. Thank you.
I was ignoring to read about this subject, finally I know a little :)
Here I am, back again! First.
I'm sorry professor... not first today, my cat was chasing the mouse across the talble...
Greetings, another gold metal to you!
@Anand Raj Well, of course. What else would you put on your high-quality connectors??
My bad. :(
Excellent work! Thank you. Not an easy subject to present.
Once again excellent! Clear dialogue, factual based, good graphics. This was educational and best I have seen on this subject. Looking forward to more digital video information. Very pleased you presented specs for your production in closure. Thanks for uploading - Liked.
Aaagh! My head is done in. Mkv seems to be the popular container these days for video sharing.
Spare a thought for the software engineers who have to cope with all this. It's a constantly moving target.
..... and the transmission engineers 😁
ExplainingComputers Thanks so much for this video !!!
Thanks for this...
I spent ten years through the 2000s trying to explain this to people who should’ve known.
Just to add, one of those projects was trying to complete a $$$ government tender for ‘Parliament House’ broadcast capture, compression, reticulation and storage systems.
The tender was so badly written, I had to call them out, and about a week later the tender was withdrawn, and rewritten some months later !
A lot of pissed-off vendors that would have tried to sell them ‘whatever’ they had!