Chapter 6. ContainersChapter 6. ContainersPrev   NextChapter 6. Containers6.1. Video formats6.1.1. MPEG files6.1.2. AVI files6.1.3. ASF/WMV files6.1.4. QuickTime/MOV files6.1.5. VIVO files6.1.6. FLI files6.1.7. RealMedia (RM) files6.1.8. NuppelVideo files6.1.9. yuv4mpeg files6.1.10. FILM files6.1.11. RoQ files6.1.12. OGG/OGM files6.1.13. SDP files6.1.14. PVA files6.1.15. NSV files6.1.16. Matroska files6.1.17. NUT files6.1.18. GIF files6.2. Audio formats6.2.1. MP3 files6.2.2. OGG/OGM files (Vorbis)6.2.3. CD audio6.2.4. XMMS
It is important to clarify a common mistake. When people see a file with a
.AVI extension, they immediately conclude that it is
not an MPEG file. That is not true. At least not entirely. Contrary to
popular belief such a file can contain MPEG-1 video.

You see, a codec is not the same as a
container format.
Examples of video codecs are: MPEG-1, MPEG-2,
MPEG-4 (DivX), Indeo5, 3ivx.
Examples of container formats are:
MPG, AVI, ASF.

In theory, you can put an OpenDivX video and MP3 audio
into an MPG container. However, most
players will not play it, since they expect MPEG-1 video and MP2 audio (unlike
AVI, MPG
does not have the necessary fields to describe its video and audio streams).
Or you might put MPEG-1 video into an AVI file.
FFmpeg and
MEncoder
can create these files.
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