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comes to video files there are a lot of
file formats out there if you're a video editor or a media enthusiast you've
probably encountered a veritable alphabet soup of different ones so just
like in our episodes on audio and image formats which you can check out up here
we're going to demystify some of the common formats that you can choose for
your newfangled moving picture movies
first up to avoid confusion it's important to keep in mind that the
extension you see at the end of a file name such as mp4 or mkv or mov
actually specifies what kind of container the file is in but there's
more to formats than just the container so all those video clips and trailers
that you got could be using any number of different codecs as well
but what's a codec glad you asked most digital video is
compressed in some way since otherwise it'd take up tons of space on your hard
drive a codec is simply a particular scheme that's used to compress or
decompress a file there are lots of codecs out there but
one of the most prevalent ones today is h.264 which is popular because it
retains decent image quality while shrinking the file sizes significantly
the way it works is by instead of saving each frame of the video pixel by pixel
h.264 splits frames into blocks of 256
pixels each and tries to predict what each subsequent block will look
like based on either the rest of the frame or from previous frames the
algorithm then compares the predicted block to the actual block creating a
difference called a residual next the kodak compares the residual to 16
checkerboard-like standard patterns and how much of each pattern contributes to
the residual is stored as a number with higher frequency patterns you see to the
lower right often discarded as these
take up the most space this is really similar to how jpeg works for still
images and like jpeg you can choose how
much compression you want with higher compression discarding more patterns and
yielding smaller file sizes but also
lower quality however h.264 is actually pretty good at
making predictions and even includes a filter to reduce some of the compression
blockiness you sometimes see on low quality video making it a standard go-to
codec for sites like youtube as well as for blu-ray discs at similar visual
quality h.264 only takes up about half as much space as mpeg-2 which is still
in use today for dvd video and broadcast tv but a new codec the imaginatively
named h.265 better known as hevc is even
more efficient than h.264 it can use blocks of up to
4096 pixels and has more advanced prediction algorithms which is critical
for keeping file sizes manageable as internet streaming continues
on its inevitable march towards 8k
of course one downside to both h.264 and
265 is that they're protected by patents
so companies that want to use these codecs have to pay royalties that seems
to be the motivation behind the development of vp8 and vp9 a pair of
open source standards being pushed by google that are technologically quite
similar to hevc there are image quality
differences but there's no real consensus as to which one is better so
some service providers like netflix just use whichever codec will work best on
the device the user's watching from there are other codecs floating around
there like the venerable avi but at this
point we've covered the major modern ones so let's get back to container
files starting with the familiar mp4 mp4
enjoys wide compatibility and can hold either an mpeg or an h.264 encoded video
along with an aac or mp3 audio stream
pro tip if you ever see m4v
at the end of a video it's basically just a version of mp4 with drm enabled
so if one of these files refuses to play try simply changing the extension to mp4
and give it another go but although mp4 is still really popular especially among
youtubers the matraska or mkv container
is one of the fastest growing it can support just about any combination of
audio and video codecs including newer ones like h.265 and has more flexible
support for menus and chapters as well as the ability to play back a corrupted
file so you won't necessarily lose all of that super important drone footage of
your boring neighborhood and for creative types there are many other
formats that you might encounter each with their own advantages and drawbacks
for example the mov format which was developed by apple for quicktime
supports multiple codecs and is easier to edit on the fly without having to
rewrite the entire file when you're done a cool feature that makes exporting a
finished video from final cut much faster than competing video editors that
have to encode the entire project from scratch finally we can't wrap this video
up without talking about flv and f4 v these indicate of course that the clip
is meant to be played in adobe flash which is being phased out
now you know i'd love to tell you all about that but we're out of time so go
and watch the video that we already made about it and be sure to yell at us down
in the comments if we neglected the file video format of your choice
juggling multiple computers is difficult you end up with various sets of mice and
keyboards on your desk which not only looks messy but gets super confusing kvm
switches can partially solve this problem but we found that they aren't
very seamless and are sometimes cumbersome but with synergy you can move
the mouse seamlessly between your computers which makes them feel like one
computer check out the full details at the link below so thanks for watching
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