Video Formats, Codecs and Containers (Explained)
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Video Formats, Codecs and Containers (Explained)

Since the start of digital video in 1988, new video formats are developed every year in an attempt to provide improvements in quality, file size and video playback. The popularity of video continues to grow rapidly, with 78% of people watching at least one digital video on one of their devices every single day; However video formats and how they work is still a subject of much confusion for most people. Whether you need to convert your video file to play in a specific browser or device, or you’re an editor looking to build your knowledge on video formats in general, we’ll teach you the basics you need to understand video files and how to use them to your advantage. In this video you’ll learn about the most popular formats, codecs and containers for the web today, which parts they consist of, and what format will be best for your situation.

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First we need to understand what a video format is. Usually people refer to the file’s extension as the video file’s format, but this isn’t entirely correct. Some formats consist as a combination of files, folders and even playlists, all of which are needed to play the video properly. To better understand video formats, let’s take a look at one specific video file and understand how all of it’s parts work together to display the videos you see on your screen. The file extension is actually a representation of what’s called the Container. A Container for a video file is the part that contains all of the other files needed to play back a specific video. These files include the video stream, the audio stream, and the meta data. This works with the video stream telling the player what needs to appear on the screen while the audio stream tells the player which sounds needs to be played alongside the video. The meta data, which means “data about data”, includes all of the other information about the video, including things like the bit-rate type, resolution, subtitles, device and time of creation, and more. One of the most important pieces of meta data which you may have run into if you’ve worked with video files, is the codec. The word codec is a combination of the words, coder and decoder. As the title suggests it creates an encoded video or audio stream, making it smaller and easier to manage.

The player or target software then decodes it based on the rules set by that codec, and plays back the video with similar quality to the original. Just like containers, there are hundreds of different codecs used on various audio and video files. Companies like Qencode allow you to convert your videos to the all latest codecs. Let’s cover the most important codecs for you to use, as well as their advantages and disadvantages. Let’s start with the video codecs. A good place to begin is H.264, or AVC as it’s commonly referred to. H.264 is by far the most commonly used video codec, mostly because it provides a significantly better bitrate over it’s predecessors for the same file size. For this reason, it is very widely supported and you can be confident you will rarely run into any support issues using the H.264. It’s successor, H.265 is referred to as HEVC which stands for High Efficiency Video Coding. This codec delivers on it’s name, with a compression rate that is almost double that of H.264. This means the a file encoded with HEVC is going to be at least 50% smaller than a file encoded in AVC. This is extremely beneficial for resolutions above 2k as well as video streaming. The flip side of HEVC is that it’s much more complicated to encode, requiring triple the resources for the video to be prepared for playback. And just like H.264, H.265 is a proprietary codec and has a royalty associated with it’s usage. Although adoption of HEVC is growing, after 3 years it’s still not nearly as popular it’s predecessor. Apple has recently announced that they will support HEVC video, however there are some new codecs on the rise which give doubts as to whether it will become dominant. For example, VP9 was developed by Google to be a royalty free and open source codec. Originally it was used for YouTube, because it also reduced bitrate 50% more that it’s predecessor, VP8. Just like H.265, it’s good for high resolutions and live streaming, but is harder to decode and less supported than H.264. However, the technology behind VP9 generally makes streams more consistent and reliable, while H.265 usually provides a better overall image quality. It’s also important to note that VP9 commonly uses the WebM or IVF containers, which we don’t have time to cover as part of this video. A new royalty-free codec, called AV1, is currently in development. Although it is still officially unreleased, people who have started to use it say it shows a lot of promise. If wanna learn more, check out the link in our description. We just covered the main video codecs you need to think about, but audio codecs are a different story and also very important to your video. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular codecs for audio, to help you better understand which one best fits your needs. MP3 is one of the most famous audio codecs out there. Developed by the Moving Pictures Experts Group in 1993, this lossy audio codec takes advantage of the limitations of human hearing, often referred to as auditory masking. An example of this is that an MP3 often is reduced to 128 kbs, which sounds almost like the original CD but is only 9% of the size. 24 years later, mp3 continues to be a popular format for sharing and playing back audio content, but it has limited functionality for video and there are a few other audio codecs that have become increasingly popular over the years.

For example AAC, which stands for Advanced Audio Coding, is a proprietary audio codec developed shortly after MP3. The main benefits of AAC are that it’s widely supported and that you get better sound for the same bitrate. This has made AAC the most popular codec to use for videos today. There are little support issues and most of the time the is the best codec to use for your video, however AAC does have a limit on audio channels, which means we will need another codec to handle more robust video experiences. If you need surround sound or backwards compatibility with Dolby products, AC3 may be the codec for you as it has a full range of channels, allowing it to fully preserve surround sound settings. But aside from DVD players and digital television, AC3 doesn’t have nearly the device support of AAC. There are other codecs as well, but currently those are the most important for audio and video. Now that we know the basics, we can finally talk about video file formats. File Formats are standardized rules for storing the containers, codecs, meta data and sometimes even folder structure of video files, so that it’s easier to support them across a large number of different devices and players. Since the very first digital video formats became popular, new formats have been developed every year in an attempt to take their place — aiming for improvements in image quality, file size, video playback, and the addition of special features. A video format can become popular when a large platform decides to support content with that format in their product, usually because of a technological breakthrough or special use case. This often creates a self perpetuating adoption cycle where creators produce more content in that format so that they can be compatible with the large platform, which then makes other platforms support that format because now there is so much more content being produced in that format. In this video we will teach you which video formats are most popular today and which formats are best to use in certain situations. First of all, there are some formats that are popular for video editing and others that are popular for online distribution. This is because editing videos generally demands higher quality files while online distribution focuses on smaller file sizes and smoother playback. For the purposes of this video, we’re mainly covering online distribution to address the growing demand of on the internet. Also, stick around until the end of this video for special tips getting the best quality from your YouTube uploads, by using the right formats, codecs and settings. Let’s start by covering some of the most popular formats. That first format we’ll look at is MP4, more specifically MPEG-4, and even more specifically MPEG-4 Part 14. The name MPEG-4 can be very confusing because different people use it for dozens of completely different things. The three most common things people mean when they say MPEG-4 are: The MP4 Container (MPEG-4 Part 14), which we are currently discussing The ISO Base Media File Format (MPEG-4 Part 12) used for video streams. The H.264 codec (MPEG-4 Part 10) is used to compress video files. For the purposes of this video, we are talking about the MP4 format, which is virtually synonymous with the container. MP4 is a great container for exporting videos for the web, because of it exists in a single container and has wide support across devices and operating systems. Due to the unpredictability of a user’s internet speed and growing demand of live streaming, a newer video technology, called adaptive bitrate segmentation, has been growing in popularity of the last few years. Adaptive bitrate, commonly referred to as ABR, works by converting a video stream into multiple resolutions, and splitting into several smaller second clips with different bitrates. This clips can then be swapped between each other if there are changes to the wifi or mobile network, preventing interruption of playback while the user’s internet catches up. In 2009, Apple developed HLS also known as HTTP live streaming. It quickly became the most popular format built on adaptive bitrate since delivering the clips over HTTP made it compatible with a wide range of devices and firewalls. Unlike MP4, one of the key files in HLS is the m3u playlist file, often called the manifest, with the extension .m3u8. which brings all of these parts together. MPEG-DASH is another adaptive bitrate format developed by the Motion Pictures Experts Group, and similar to HLS it uses the HTTP protocol. The main difference with DASH is that it’s an open-source format and it was developed for global standardization, which it achieved in 2012 when it officially became the first International Standard for adaptive streaming. Although HLS is still the most popular online streaming format, MPEG-DASH is quickly catching up. The royalty-free approach was made it popular initially, however this is still very good format to explore.

This covers the most important formats, containers and codecs for audio and video today. Let us know which combinations of formats and codecs you’re thinking of using in the comments below! Do you already have a setup that is working well for you? We’d love to hear from you. And now, on to our special tip: What video settings are best to upload a video to YouTube to get the very result? If you have the option to export your videos with any settings you choose, these are the settings you need to get the highest quality from your videos on YouTube. First of all, the best format for a YouTube upload is the MP4 container using the H.264 codec. Set the audio channel to Stereo or Stereo 5.1 with a sample rate of 96khz. Make sure your Aspect Ratio is 16:9 and your frame rate is set to 60fps. If you can’t set your framerate that high, choose the highest between 50, 48, 30, 25, or 24 frames per second. For bitrate, the best settings will depend on a combination of resolution, frame rate and whether or not the video is HDR. Please use this graph to find the bitrate setting ideal for your video. You can pause the video while you do so {short pause} The audio bitrate will depend on your channel settings. For Stereo 5.1, set it to 512 kbps, for just just stereo, set it to 384, and for Mono use 128 kbps. You can find all of this information, as well as some more advanced settings in the Google Help Center. We’ll post a direct link in the description. If this video was helpful to you, please hit the like button and subscribe to our channel for more interesting videos about digital media technology. This video is brought to you by Qencode — the better cloud video transcoding solution. Get 500 minutes free by visiting qencode.com and utilize our highly scalable, low-cost, and fully customizable transcoding platform for your business today. Also, be sure to check out some of our other videos.