How to understand the different types of digital video

VLC is a multiplatform software that reads all video formats. You can download it from here.

There is a battle raging between the different computer platforms. It seems that the winners in this hyped up competition are DIVX and XVID (even thought they look alike, they are conceptually very different.)

These two have gained in popularity because of their widespread use in e-mule and in the P2P network.

Before diving into the subject of different digital video formats there is one thing that must first be clearly explained because it has just about everyone baffled.

Códec?, AVI? DivX? Quicktime?. Please, could somebody please tell me what all this means? 

Let's imagine the following scenario. We go to a library where each and every book is stored within a box. Each box is different and each box may contain a book written in a different language, eg. English, French or Spanish. Each box gives each book a different name that is of course referential.

So we can buy a box and inside this box there is the variable of language. This is what happens with digital video. One thing is the external packaging and another thing is the internal content. So with all this stated, we cut to the quick, how do we get to watch this video on our own computer?

The computer must first recognise the "container," the box itself and then proceed to interpret the content. This two step process and requires two different types of software. Of course software does exist that can read both.

A good example is VideoLAN (available for both Windows and Apple) it can read absolutely everything, but only READ. If you wish to edit or modify a video you will need to know the container and content types.

The Necesary Software needed to edit containers and content.

The software used to interpret the content of digital video is known as codecs because they interpret and translate (codify and decodify) the content as if it were a human language.

For Windows I recommend this site where you can download them all: http://www.free-codecs.com/ .

For Apple I suggest visiting Perian (for the content) http://perian.org/ and http://www.flip4mac.com/ to open the containers such as WMV.

Tables of Containers and Contents