From the course: Digital Media Foundations

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What’s in a file format?: Understanding .mov, .mxf, and more

What’s in a file format?: Understanding .mov, .mxf, and more

From the course: Digital Media Foundations

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What’s in a file format?: Understanding .mov, .mxf, and more

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- [Instructor] It's easy to confuse codecs, formats, and file types. And I'd like to take a moment to clarify the differences between them. Now let's start with the codec. This is the actual video and sound information in your media file. There are lots of different codecs available and there are wonderful debates to be had about the best codec for a particular purpose, but whichever you choose, this is the actual media. That media stored as a codec will be inside a file type. This might be a Quicktime movie, AVI file, or whatever. These are often referred to as formats, but it's really just a type of file. There are several different popular media file types, each developed by different companies, often for different purposes. Perhaps one is developed for camera acquisition while another is for archiving or media exchange between software applications. All media files serve in particular ways. They can contain particular codecs, and by this I mean that not every codec can be…

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