Lift the veil over formats

Posted by kevintsa on Tuesday, June 27, 2006 - 10:33 pm:

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There are many kinds of video/audio formats being commonly used, and if only you¡¯ve got some ABCs about video, you should not be unfamiliar with such popular formats as AVI, MPED, MOV, RM, etc. There always exists an answer to a reasonable question, and there is always in existence a player to be compatible with the file in a particular format. So as it is, QuickTime player relates to MOV , and Real Player is a pal of RM .But if your dear player only has a Real Player ,while the file on hand is MOV, then which you should whine about, the player or the file? Take it easy, please. The best way is to fix the problem is to find a kind of ¡®bridge¡¯ between these two formats .Find a gadget to do the conversion work , put an end to all your fuss, and have a good time while watching the converted video file.

The first stage we start with is to get some basic knowledge about the different formats. Here I introduce some universally used formats to give a general idea.

AVI
Audio/viedo interleave, the most ubiquitous audio/video container format, which support the most audio and video formats
MPG
The audio/video container for MPEG£¬has a streaming attribute. It can be further classified into PS,TS, used respectively as a container for DVD and HDTV .
VOB
The audio/video container format for DVD, supports multi-video ,multi-track, and multi-title etc.
MP4
The audio/video container format for MPEG-4,based on QuickTime MOV ,and features many superiorities.
3GP
3GPP uses 3GP as a video format to transmit streaming media.
ASF
Windows Media applies ASF as its audio/video container ,to be used for transmitting streams, script included.
RM
Real Media uses RM to transmit streams
MOV
The audio/video container for QuickTime ,maybe the most powerful container at present. Besides many common technologies it supports, it even upholds virtual reality and java, an edge over its variations such as MP4 and 3GP.
WAV
A kind of audio container. People often refer to WAV as the unzipped PCM code, but as a matter of fact, WAV also includes other ACM zipping codes such as MP3.
MP3
MPEG Audio Layer 3 ,as has been mentioned above.

Based on this first step, we then come to face with a sea of different converters. It is a practical yardstick that the more powerful a soft is, that is to say supporting more formats and providing more output formats, the more appealing it is to consumers. I like to try different things, and do some comparison work. Among the many soft I¡¯ve tried, I¡¯d like to recommend Xilisoft. It provides many kinds of converters .It affords not only powerful functions , but also a low price .