Let’s learn about the different types of audio and video formats.
You have probably heard of, or even used, a few common ones. If the terms MP3, MP4, MOV, or WebM are familiar to you, those are all different formats for video and audio. And there are quite a few more that are available.
Before we dive in to file formats, we need to talk about MIME types. A MIME type, standing for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, is a standardized way to programmatically indicate a file type.
Nearly every file format has a MIME type. HTML, for example, has the type text/html. A JSON object has the type application/json. Even a Windows .exe installer has a MIME type: application/vnd.microsoft.portable-executable.
The MIME type can tell an application, such as your browser, how to handle a specific file. In the case of audio and video, the MIME type indicates it is a multimedia format that can be embedded in the web page.
An MP3 file has the MIME type audio/mp3. An MP4, however, can have the MIME type audio/mp4 OR video/mp4, depending on whether it’s a video file or audio-only. This distinction tells the browser how to handle the file.
There are plenty of other file formats, such as the waveform format WAV, the multipurpose OGG, WMV for the Windows media player, the open source MKV, and many more.
Knowing the differences between these file formats can help you ensure your users get the best experience, but sometimes you can’t know what format a user’s computer will support (or not support). Thankfully, video and audio elements both support the source element.
With the source element, you can specify a file type and source and can include multiple different types by using multiple source elements. When you do this, the browser will determine the best format to use for the user’s current environment