- [Instructor] It's easy to confuse
codecs, formats, and file types.
And I'd like to take a moment to clarify
the differences between them.
Now let's start with the codec.
This is the actual video and sound information
in your media file.
There are lots of different codecs available
and there are wonderful debates to be had
about the best codec for a particular purpose,
but whichever you choose, this is the actual media.
That media stored as a codec will be inside a file type.
This might be a Quicktime movie, AVI file, or whatever.
These are often referred to as formats,
but it's really just a type of file.
There are several different popular media file types,
each developed by different companies,
often for different purposes.
Perhaps one is developed for camera acquisition
while another is for archiving
or media exchange between software applications.
All media files serve in particular ways.
They can contain particular codecs,
and by this I mean that not every codec
can be contained by every media file.
.MOV Quicktime movie files are particularly flexible
in terms of the range of codecs supported,
while AVI files are particularly limited.
This is very much a case of it either working or not.
There isn't a setting you can choose
to add unsupported codecs to a file
because it's part of the design.
For this reason,
when you choose a file type for file compression,
you'll discover a limited number of codecs
are available to choose between.
Media files also support a range of metadata entries.
Once again, Quicktime .MOV files are pretty flexible
in terms of the metadata information
you can store in the file,
though not as flexible as MXF files,
while AVI files are quite limited.
File types like Quicktime, MXF, or AVI
are sometimes called container files or wrappers
because they contain media that is stored
using a particular codec,
but they aren't actually the media.
You can sometimes rewrap media which means
changing the wrapper file type without
modifying the media stored inside it as a codec.
In a sense, wrapper files or container files
are a little like the label on a tin of soup.
Changing the label or modifying the writing on the label
won't change the soup inside the tin.
A format is a particular frame rate,
frame size, pixel aspect ratio, and so on.
Formats don't need to include
a particular file type or codec.
HD, for example, is a video format,
standard definition NTSC is,
4k is,
but don't be surprised when somebody makes reference
to a particular file as a format.