Video formats

[Liz]

What do you think are the top 3 video formats and why do you think so also include disadvantages please?..eg avi -better quality big file sizes etc...

[lemmingllama]

Really there is only one choice that is really good. MKV!!!!!!!! Best compression with good detail. Only problem is that it wont run on some players or portable media since it requires certain codecs. Other than that, really the only decent ones are avi and mp4.

[Reptoholic]

I personally like MKV the best. I will use AVI, but I prefer MKV. iTunes uses MPEG-4.

[Dae314]

I'm gonna jump in here and clarify some things you're talking about:

1) .avi, .mkv, .flv, etc. are containers. While these may have some effect on quality, it's not the main thing you should be looking for. The containers act as structures that house video/audio/other stuff in a way that a media player compatible with the container will be able to look at it and play back the stuff in the container the way it's supposed to look.

2) What I think you really want to know about are video codecs. These are the things which compress and read compressed video files that are held by the containers. You'll have to talk to an encoder (I'm not an encoder, just someone who's researched this before) if you want to learn more about the strengths and weaknesses of the different codecs and how it translates into quality/file size. There is a whole different set of codecs for audio too.

3) You may have noticed with the wiki page, but the reason why mkv is so popular with anime is because mkv is a container that supports basically everything. Since anime encoders aren't necessarily encoding for a specific platform that requires a certain media container, the encoders choose to go with mkv so that they're able to use a very wide range of codecs in their work. It allows for a lot of flexibility, and mkv has good support for advanced features.

4) If you want to know more specifics about how encoding works, then I would suggest you go on our irc channel. I've had long conversations with several people there about the encoding work they do (although I don't do encoding myself). They'll be able to help you understand what's happening and how to judge quality. I know that Koby does encoding here, but I don't know if any other forum members are encoders. If any of them see this thread and make themselves known, you could also talk to them.

[zx0]

I agree with Dae314

By saying you prefer MKV you are probably talking about h.264.

[† An IP BreAKDoWN]

I'm gonna jump in here and clarify some things you're talking about:

1) .avi, .mkv, .flv, etc. are containers. While these may have some effect on quality, it's not the main thing you should be looking for. The containers act as structures that house video/audio/other stuff in a way that a media player compatible with the container will be able to look at it and play back the stuff in the container the way it's supposed to look.

2) What I think you really want to know about are video codecs. These are the things which compress and read compressed video files that are held by the containers. You'll have to talk to an encoder (I'm not an encoder, just someone who's researched this before) if you want to learn more about the strengths and weaknesses of the different codecs and how it translates into quality/file size. There is a whole different set of codecs for audio too.

3) You may have noticed with the wiki page, but the reason why mkv is so popular with anime is because mkv is a container that supports basically everything. Since anime encoders aren't necessarily encoding for a specific platform that requires a certain media container, the encoders choose to go with mkv so that they're able to use a very wide range of codecs in their work. It allows for a lot of flexibility, and mkv has good support for advanced features.

4) If you want to know more specifics about how encoding works, then I would suggest you go on our irc channel. I've had long conversations with several people there about the encoding work they do (although I don't do encoding myself). They'll be able to help you understand what's happening and how to judge quality. I know that Koby does encoding here, but I don't know if any other forum members are encoders. If any of them see this thread and make themselves known, you could also talk to them.

^ Awesome post, thanks Dae314, this is very informal for everyone that wants to know about making something mkv to mp4 or whatever. Also MKV allows for soft subs and mutiple audio and video channels, so you can have english dub with sign translations, or Japanese audio with english dialogue translation subs, or even Japanese audio with something like german audio all in one file. Plus its open source too. And you can probably guess I'm a fan of MKV and so is almost EVERY other encoder out there. The only issue right now with MKV is that most devices besides a PC won't play MKVs, however muxing a MKV into a MP4 is super easy and fast that it really doesn't matter. And sorry for not including the other two as the original post asked for, there really is no need for it, as like what Dae314 mentioned, codecs are deal with the actual video in how it looks, and everything else. So if you want to know the answer to that, ask about codecs instead. (Just giving you a heads up XviD is for the most part dead, and h264 is pretty much the new standard now, especially with HD material).

[i241357]

the .mkv container offers the best quality imo

[† An IP BreAKDoWN]

the .mkv container offers the best quality imo

Again mkv has nothing to do with video quality You should re-post if you mean otherwise.

[qaz015393]

I only can name two, mkv and mp4. Mkv because great compression & mp4 because I get to view them on my media devices, computer, ipod touch & my psp.

[† An IP BreAKDoWN]

...Mkv because great compression...

mkv doesn't compress o.o

[ZeroPenguins]

Man this brings back a lot of memories, so many people think that avi, mp4, mkv and etc are actual video codec and format. But like Dae said it's containers and I always have a good laugh out of this. Funny part is avi, mp4 and mkv can all offer good compression if you use H.264.

[zolockit]

BOFA <- best video format.

[ultimate]

Best container is probably MKV so far. Chaptered episodes, external subs and dual audio are the main reasons I prefer it. MP4 is pretty decent too though. Anyway I'm pretty sure most people prefer h.264. I don't think AVI works with h.264 well based on what I saw when Dattebayo was still fansubbing Naruto.

[spider69]

MKV is best . you can put subtitle and multy audio in it and it's better quality with less size .

i think OGM was the same but i think mkv can use X264 and H264 encoding which makes videos smaller with same quality.

MP4 can use h264 but i didn't see or hear that this format can have multy audio or subtitle.

AVI is good if you wan't to watch your video on old dvdplayers which support divx as well or your old pmp.

[† An IP BreAKDoWN]

Way to bring up a really old thread. lol. And as far as what you just posted x264 is a program that encodes to h264 and h264 is a codec, not a program. Don't confuse same quality with similar quality, you will never have an exact same quality when you encode, unless you set to like crf to 0. mp4 will allow for multiple audio files, however you are very limited to subtitles, ttxt and vobsub come to mind though there is a reason fansubbers don't use mp4.

Is anyone actually interested in learing the vast details about this all?

[Hawkester]

I actually am yes if its not too much of a bother

Edited December 12, 2012 by Hawkester

[† An IP BreAKDoWN]

Ok well first there are a very common misconception that I hope anyone that is reading this will now understand. First is that .mp4, .mkv, .avi, and .ogm are containers; there are others as well, however these are the most common ones.

What is a container?

A container is a file format that contains a video stream, a audio stream, sometimes subtitles, and other miscellaneous files (for example chapters, fonts, and some other small things). A container in general is not limited to all or none of these things, so some containers may contain many different audio, subtitles and some may have multiple different video streams. Here is a couple of charts that compare video containers to compatible video, audio, and subtitles streams. Essentially a container can be manipulated to give a different desired result, as you can add, edit, and/or remove any number of streams.

Why does it matter one can manipulate a container?

It matters because of a couple of different primary reasons: you may want to add different languages to an already existing container, or perhaps your favorite media decoder may not be compatible with the container, for example your PS3 or your phone. The process of manipulating a container is called multiplexing (also known as muxing). The process is fairly fast and will only manipulate how the file is meant to be read and will not effect quality of the video or audio. Which is ideal if you like to save time and would like to have the video and audio to be the same. There are a couple of muxing programs such as MKVtoolnix, yamb, ffmpeg, and mp4box. GUI versions make muxing several files at a time easy, however if you're doing several hundred a GUI will not be ideal. Programs that allow cli, such as ffmpeg allow you to batch any number of files.

Should one be converting files or muxing?

If you use a program like handbrake to make a video container like mkv into a mp4 then you're doing it wrong. You should be muxing the file, not converting (transcoding). The only time you would want to use a program like handbrake to make a mkv into a mp4 is when you want to hard code the sub file into the video. The problem with that though is that you'll lose quality. Keep in mind those charts, some containers allow subtitles besides mkv, you could also try muxing variations of the same subtitles with the proper container.

If anyone has any questions I'll try to answer them, I don't have time to go into alot of detail, however I'll answer any questions as thoroughly as possible.

[Hawkester]

Interesting. And just from the chart alone, it can be seen that for watching on computers, why mkv is used a lot. It supports all the categories on that table (except for one but its under development).

I don't really have any questions, but this is interesting.

[† An IP BreAKDoWN]

Its under development but its very stable, probably the most stable container out there now. And its support for .ass styled subs is unmatched.