各种视频格式之间有什么区别？

Question

MP4、WMV、AVI、OGG等，它们之间有什么区别，在不同平台上的支持情况如何，各有什么优势？

Answer 1

来自维基百科 - 容器格式（数字）

多媒体容器格式

容器文件用于识别和交错不同的数据类型。更简单的容器格式可以包含不同类型的音频编解码器，而更高级的容器格式可以支持多个音频和视频流、字幕、章节信息和元数据（标签）——以及播放各种流所需的同步信息一起。在大多数情况下，文件头、大部分元数据和同步块由容器格式指定（例如，容器格式用于优化的低质量互联网视频流，例如，不同于高质量的 DVD 流要求）。

容器格式的组成部分有不同的名称；它们通常被称为“块”，如在 RIFF 和 PNG 中，而在 MPEG-TS（来自通信术语）中被称为“数据包”，在 JPEG 中被称为“段”。块的主要内容称为“数据”或“有效载荷”。大多数容器格式都有连续的块，每个块都有一个标题，而 TIFF 则不同寻常地存储偏移量，这导致难以正确保存信息——尤其是，Exif 照片数据经常被丢弃。模块化块可以很容易地在文件损坏或丢帧或位滑的情况下恢复其他块，而在位滑的情况下偏移会导致帧错误。

一些容器是音频专用的：

* AIFF (IFF file format, widely used on Mac OS platform)
* WAV (RIFF file format, widely used on Windows platform)
* XMF (Extensible Music Format)

其他容器专用于静止图像：

* FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) is a wrapper file format for still images, raw data, and associated metadata.
* TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) is a wrapper file format for still images and associated metadata.

其他灵活的容器可以容纳多种类型的音频和视频，以及其他媒体。最流行的多媒体容器是：

* 3GP (used by many mobile phones; based on the ISO base media file format)
* ANIM Standard multimedia file for digital animations on classical Commodore Amiga line of computers. It follows IFF ILBM main specifications, and it is the first animation format adopted officially by an Operating System.
* ASF (standard container for Microsoft WMA and WMV)
* AVI (the standard Microsoft Windows container, also based on RIFF)
* CDXL (another name of ANIM format), it was the animation file format standard of CDTV and Amiga CD32
* DVR-MS ("Microsoft Digital Video Recording", proprietary video container format developed by Microsoft based on ASF)
* IFF (first platform-independent container format)
* Matroska (MKV) (not standard for any codec or system, as it can hold virtually anything. It is an open standard and open source container format).
* MJ2 - Motion JPEG 2000 file format, based on the ISO base media file format which is defined in MPEG-4 Part 12 and JPEG 2000 Part 12
* MOV (standard QuickTime video container from Apple Inc.)
* MPEG program stream (standard container for MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 elementary streams on reasonably reliable media such as disks; used also on DVD-Video discs)
* MPEG-2 transport stream (TS) (a.k.a. MPEG-TS) (standard container for digital broadcasting and for transportation over unreliable media; used also on Blu-ray Disc Video; typically contains multiple video and audio streams, and an electronic program guide)
* MP4 (standard audio and video container for the MPEG-4 multimedia portfolio, based on the ISO base media file format defined in MPEG-4 Part 12 and JPEG 2000 Part 12)
* Ogg (standard container for Xiph.org audio codec Vorbis and video codec Theora)
* OGM ("Ogg Media", video container for Xiph.org codecs, no longer supported and formally discouraged by Xiph.org[1].)
* RealMedia (standard container for RealVideo and RealAudio)

还有许多其他容器格式，例如 NUT、MXF、GXF、ratDVD、SVI、VOB 和 DivX 媒体格式

有关这些格式的详细信息，请参阅容器格式的比较。