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Formats
66 formats, in plain English
What each file type is for, where it opens, and the mistake people usually make with it. Every page lists the conversions in and out.
21 formats
Image formats
Photos, screenshots, icons, textures and scans.
- PNG Portable Network Graphics A lossless image format with full transparency
- JPG JPEG A lossy photo format that trades detail you can’t see for much smaller files
- JFIF JPEG File Interchange Format An ordinary JPEG photo that carries the .jfif extension
- WEBP WebP A web image format that can be lossy or lossless, with transparency and animation
- AVIF AV1 Image File Format A modern image format that squeezes photos smaller than WebP
- GIF Graphics Interchange Format A 256-color image format best known for short looping animations
- BMP Windows Bitmap An uncompressed grid of pixels
- TIFF Tagged Image File Format A high-fidelity format used by scanners, printers and archives
- ICO Windows Icon A small container that holds the same icon at several sizes
- HEIC High Efficiency Image Container The iPhone’s photo format, built on the HEVC video codec
- SVG Scalable Vector Graphics A vector format made of shapes instead of pixels
- TGA Truevision TGA (TARGA) A simple raster format with an alpha channel, common in games and 3D work
- PPM Portable Pixmap A bare-bones color image format with no compression
- PGM Portable Graymap An uncompressed grayscale image format
- PBM Portable Bitmap A pure black-and-white image format, one bit per pixel
- APNG Animated PNG A PNG that animates, with full color and soft transparency
- DDS DirectDraw Surface A GPU texture format with block compression and mipmaps
- PSD Photoshop Document Photoshop’s layered working file
- EXR OpenEXR A high dynamic range format that stores light as floating-point numbers
- XWD X Window Dump A raw screen capture from Unix and Linux desktops
- JPEG 2000 JPEG 2000 A wavelet-based image format used by cinema, medicine and archives
24 formats
Video formats
From phone recordings to DVDs, camcorders and old web video.
- MP4 MPEG-4 Part 14 The video container that plays on everything, usually holding H.264 video and AAC audio
- WEBM WebM The web’s open video format, holding VP8, VP9 or AV1 video with Opus or Vorbis audio
- MKV Matroska Video A flexible container for any codec, with several audio and subtitle tracks
- MOV QuickTime Movie Apple’s video container, usually H.264 or HEVC from an iPhone
- AVI Audio Video Interleave Windows’ original video container, common for older camcorder files and downloads
- FLV Flash Video The video format of the Flash-era web
- OGV Ogg Video Open-source Theora video in an Ogg container
- 3GP 3GPP Multimedia A small mobile video format from the feature-phone era
- MPG MPEG-1 / MPEG-2 Program Stream The video format of Video CDs, DVDs and early camcorders
- TS MPEG Transport Stream The broadcast container, also used by camcorders (.mts) and web streaming
- WMV Windows Media Video The Windows Media video format from the Windows XP era
- VOB DVD Video Object The MPEG-2 video files inside a DVD’s VIDEO_TS folder
- ASF Advanced Systems Format Microsoft’s streaming container, found on old CCTV recorders and Windows Media streams
- RM RealMedia RealNetworks’ streaming video format from the dial-up era
- DIVX DivX Video An AVI-style file with DivX (MPEG-4 Part 2) video
- F4V Flash MP4 Video An MP4-style file from late-era Flash video
- MXF Material Exchange Format The professional broadcast and camera container
- OGM Ogg Media An unofficial Ogg variant from early-2000s fan releases
- DV Digital Video Raw footage captured from MiniDV tapes and camcorders
- M2V MPEG-2 Video Stream A raw MPEG-2 video stream with no audio
- SVI Samsung Video Video from Samsung’s old portable media players
- NUT NUT Open Container A lean container format from the FFmpeg developers
- Y4M YUV4MPEG2 Raw, uncompressed video frames used for codec testing
- M4V Apple MPEG-4 Video An MP4 video with Apple’s extension
21 formats
Audio formats
Music, voice notes, podcasts, surround soundtracks and lossless rips.
- MP3 MPEG-1 Audio Layer III The most compatible lossy audio format ever made
- WAV Waveform Audio File Uncompressed, studio-quality audio
- M4A MPEG-4 Audio AAC audio in an MP4 container, Apple’s everyday audio format
- OGG Ogg Vorbis Open-source lossy audio, common in games and on Android
- OPUS Opus The most efficient audio codec in common use, especially for speech
- FLAC Free Lossless Audio Codec Lossless audio at roughly half the size of WAV
- AIFF Audio Interchange File Format Uncompressed audio, Apple’s equivalent of WAV
- WMA Windows Media Audio The Windows Media audio format from the Windows XP era
- AC3 Dolby Digital Dolby Digital surround sound from DVDs and TV
- AAC Advanced Audio Coding (raw stream) A bare AAC audio stream without the M4A wrapper
- AMR Adaptive Multi-Rate Narrow-band speech audio from phones and call recorders
- APE Monkey’s Audio Lossless audio squeezed slightly smaller than FLAC
- MPC Musepack A lossy codec tuned for transparency, from the early 2000s audiophile scene
- RA RealAudio Streaming audio from the dial-up web
- TTA True Audio A fast, simple lossless audio codec
- WV WavPack A flexible lossless (or hybrid) audio codec
- AU Sun Audio A simple audio format from Sun and NeXT workstations
- CAF Core Audio Format Apple’s professional audio container
- GSM GSM 06.10 Audio Phone-quality speech from telephone systems and voicemail
- DTS DTS Digital Surround Cinema surround sound from DVDs and Blu-rays
- MKA Matroska Audio Audio tracks in a Matroska container