Video Files' Formats

There are many different video formats such as:

- MOV;
- MP4 (MPE4);
- AVI;
- MPG;
- M4V;
- M2T;
- WMD;
- VOB;
- GIF;
- M2T
- and a lot of others.

Lossless and lossy video compression.

Lossy compression gets gradually worse the more you encode it. If you have a source video from your camcorder, and you encode it to a lossy intermediate codec that your video editor understand, then encode it again to a final product that you upload to YouTube, you've essentially reduced the quality of the video twice. Even if you match or exceed the bit rate each time, the compressor will work to copy the source file in a new way, essentially making a copy of copy.

Commonly used lossless video compression methods include:

- FFV1
- ProRes (Depending)
- Huffyuv
- Dirac (Can be lossless)

Lossless creation is an exact pixel-by-pixel copy of the original file. Each pixel is taken from the source and placed in the new file exactly where it existed in the source file. A lossless compression may significantly increase file size.

Commonly used lossy video compression methods include:

- H.264
- MPEG-2
- MPEG-4
- MPEG-1
- VC-1

Lossy compression methods don't make pixel-by-pixel copies of the source at all.

Compressed and uncompressed video files.

Video files may be compressed or uncompressed. Uncompressed video files consist of raw video in the form that it was originally recorded. File sizes for uncompressed video files are typically very large. Compressed video files may either be compressed using a lossless or lossy technique. Video files compressed using a lossy technique typically take up significantly less disk space when comparable to lossless video files.