Multimedia Formats

This page contains file formats that are used to transport multimedia data. Some multimedia file formats, such as Quicktime (MOV) and RealMedia (RM), are rather well-documented by their originators. Some, such as Microsoft's AVI and ASF, are loosely documented, if at all. This section has a collection of official and unofficial documentation. If official documentation exists, any unofficial documentation presented here will be supplemental and will focus on quirks and traps to be aware of when decoding such files.

General-Purpose Formats

This section primarily focuses on formats that are designed as transports to carry many different types of data for many different types of applications.

Special-Purpose Formats

This section covers multimedia formats that are geared toward a special purpose. That special purpose is quite typically full-motion video for games. Note that many of these format descriptions also contain descriptions for video codecs as the video codec tends to be tied to the specific format.

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