WEBVTT

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thanks for watching techwiki click the subscribe button then enable

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notifications with the bell icon so you won't miss any future videos when it

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comes to video files there are a lot of

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file formats out there if you're a video editor or a media enthusiast you've

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probably encountered a veritable alphabet soup of different ones so just

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like in our episodes on audio and image formats which you can check out up here

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we're going to demystify some of the common formats that you can choose for

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your newfangled moving picture movies

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first up to avoid confusion it's important to keep in mind that the

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extension you see at the end of a file name such as mp4 or mkv or mov

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actually specifies what kind of container the file is in but there's

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more to formats than just the container so all those video clips and trailers

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that you got could be using any number of different codecs as well

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but what's a codec glad you asked most digital video is

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compressed in some way since otherwise it'd take up tons of space on your hard

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drive a codec is simply a particular scheme that's used to compress or

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decompress a file there are lots of codecs out there but

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one of the most prevalent ones today is h.264 which is popular because it

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retains decent image quality while shrinking the file sizes significantly

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the way it works is by instead of saving each frame of the video pixel by pixel

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h.264 splits frames into blocks of 256

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pixels each and tries to predict what each subsequent block will look

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like based on either the rest of the frame or from previous frames the

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algorithm then compares the predicted block to the actual block creating a

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difference called a residual next the kodak compares the residual to 16

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checkerboard-like standard patterns and how much of each pattern contributes to

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the residual is stored as a number with higher frequency patterns you see to the

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lower right often discarded as these

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take up the most space this is really similar to how jpeg works for still

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images and like jpeg you can choose how

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much compression you want with higher compression discarding more patterns and

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yielding smaller file sizes but also

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lower quality however h.264 is actually pretty good at

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making predictions and even includes a filter to reduce some of the compression

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blockiness you sometimes see on low quality video making it a standard go-to

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codec for sites like youtube as well as for blu-ray discs at similar visual

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quality h.264 only takes up about half as much space as mpeg-2 which is still

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in use today for dvd video and broadcast tv but a new codec the imaginatively

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named h.265 better known as hevc is even

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more efficient than h.264 it can use blocks of up to

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4096 pixels and has more advanced prediction algorithms which is critical

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for keeping file sizes manageable as internet streaming continues

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on its inevitable march towards 8k

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of course one downside to both h.264 and

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265 is that they're protected by patents

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so companies that want to use these codecs have to pay royalties that seems

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to be the motivation behind the development of vp8 and vp9 a pair of

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open source standards being pushed by google that are technologically quite

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similar to hevc there are image quality

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differences but there's no real consensus as to which one is better so

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some service providers like netflix just use whichever codec will work best on

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the device the user's watching from there are other codecs floating around

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there like the venerable avi but at this

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point we've covered the major modern ones so let's get back to container

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files starting with the familiar mp4 mp4

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enjoys wide compatibility and can hold either an mpeg or an h.264 encoded video

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along with an aac or mp3 audio stream

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pro tip if you ever see m4v

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at the end of a video it's basically just a version of mp4 with drm enabled

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so if one of these files refuses to play try simply changing the extension to mp4

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and give it another go but although mp4 is still really popular especially among

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youtubers the matraska or mkv container

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is one of the fastest growing it can support just about any combination of

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audio and video codecs including newer ones like h.265 and has more flexible

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support for menus and chapters as well as the ability to play back a corrupted

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file so you won't necessarily lose all of that super important drone footage of

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your boring neighborhood and for creative types there are many other

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formats that you might encounter each with their own advantages and drawbacks

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for example the mov format which was developed by apple for quicktime

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supports multiple codecs and is easier to edit on the fly without having to

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rewrite the entire file when you're done a cool feature that makes exporting a

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finished video from final cut much faster than competing video editors that

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have to encode the entire project from scratch finally we can't wrap this video

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up without talking about flv and f4 v these indicate of course that the clip

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is meant to be played in adobe flash which is being phased out

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now you know i'd love to tell you all about that but we're out of time so go

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and watch the video that we already made about it and be sure to yell at us down

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in the comments if we neglected the file video format of your choice

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juggling multiple computers is difficult you end up with various sets of mice and

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keyboards on your desk which not only looks messy but gets super confusing kvm

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switches can partially solve this problem but we found that they aren't

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very seamless and are sometimes cumbersome but with synergy you can move

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the mouse seamlessly between your computers which makes them feel like one

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computer check out the full details at the link below so thanks for watching

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guys be sure to like the video dislike it if you have to leave a comment for

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what we should do in future videos like subscribe all that good stuff i said

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subscribe already so thanks for watching guys make sure to like the video if you

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liked it dislike it if you didn't like it leave a comment for ideas of what we

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should do in future videos subscribe follow

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see you later