Open MP4 File

Media File Formats

• MKV file extension is used by Matroska multimedia container. Matroska is a free container file format similar in storage principle to MP4 container file format. It can store unlimited number of video, audio and subtitles streams. MKV is very popular for storing various types of video content on the internet because Matroska standard specification is open and many open source tools exist for working with MKV files.
• FLV is short for Flash Video File. Flash video is a container file format for delivering video content via Adobe Flash Player. In order to play FLV files within the internet browser Adobe Flash Player needs to be installed. It is also possible to download FLV files to the computer and play in media player like VLC player.
• AVI is a media file format introduced by Microsoft in 1992. Similar to MKV, MP4 and FLV it can contain multiple video and audio streams but this functionality is rarely used. AVI file format has multiple limitations which prevented it from becoming a popular video file storage format. These include: no standardized aspect ratio encoding, multiple incompatible ways to encode time codes, limited support of modern compression methods like MPEG-4, no variable bit rate support, significant overhead in storage. Still, there are many AVI files in existence and they could be read by most of the modern media players like VLC Player, Windows Media Player, etc.
• MOV is a file extension used by files in QuickTime File Format (QTFF). QTFF is very similar to MP4 file format and typically players which support MP4 also support MOV. Still many implementations of MPEG-4 only provide MP4 parser. This include Playstation Portable and many DVD players.
• WMV is a file extension used by Windows Media Video file format created by Microsoft in 2003. WMV uses Windows Media Video compression format which is the most popular compression format for WMV files.