Digital Video Trinity

Format Naming

Clearer would be to declare a triplet:

• H.264 / AAC in MP4
• FFV1 / PCM in Matroska (MKV)
• ProRes / PCM in MOV
• DPX / WAV(PCM) in a folder

(= Video/Audio format in Container)

Format Naming

Real-life Status Quo

It’s “MPEG-4”: All clear?

See: The MPEG-4 Confusion

It’s already a mess…

Source: MAGIX product website (Feb.2015)

But getting better:

Source: MAGIX Produkt-Website (Okt.2016)

FourCC

FourCC

Is short for ‘Four Character Code’ -
an identifier for a video codec, compression format, color or pixel format used in media files.

(FourCC is the legacy format identifier in AVI & Quicktime)

FourCC Examples

• FFV1 = FFV1
• v210 = v210
• X264 = H.264
• XviD = XviD
• DV25 = DVCPro
• DV50 = DVCPro 50
• MJ2C, LCW2, LJ2K = MJPEG 2000
• …

Links:

• FourCC.org
• List of FourCCs (abcAVI Tag Editor documentation)
• Video Codecs by FourCC (MovieCodec.com)
• Microsoft: DirectShow FourCC Codes
• Microsoft: YUV Video Subtypes
• RGB pixel formats
• YUV pixel formats

Comments?

Questions?

More to know about digital AV:

• AV Format Intro
• Format Naming
• Basic
• Advanced
• Extra