Audio File Formats in RWD

An audio file is used to store audio data on various devices, such as a computer system, mp3 players and mobile phones. Only MP3, WAV, and Ogg audio file formats are supported by the HTML 5 standard.

WAV (.wav file extension)

• Popular audio file format developed by Microsoft and IBM to store an audio bit-stream on computer system.
• It is an application of the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF), bit-stream format method for storing data in "chunks".
• This file format is also named as audio for Windows since it is the main format used on Windows system for raw and uncompressed audio.
• The usual bit-stream encoding is the linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM) format.
• The WAV file has become a standard PC audio file format for everything from system and game sounds to CD-quality audio.
• A Wave file also stores information about the file's number of tracks, sample rate, bit depth, and whether it's mono or stereo.
• Plays well on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux operating systems and supported by HTML 5.

MP3 (.mp3 file extension)

• MP3 files are actually the sound part of MPEG files. MP3 is the most popular format for music players. MP3 provides near CD quality audio.
• It is not an MPEG 3 but uses the audio compression found in layer III in MPEG 1 or 2 video files, the audio stream layer.
• MP3 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3) is a standard technology and format for compressing a sound sequence into a very small file (about one-twelfth the size of the original file) while preserving the original level of sound quality when it is played.
• MP3 file format supported by all browsers.

Ogg (.ogg file extension)

• Ogg file format developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation.
• It is an open source patent-free audio compression format, developed as a replacement for proprietary digital audio encoding formats, such as MP3.
• Ogg files (.ogg extension) compress to a smaller size than MP3 files, which reduces bandwidth and storage requirements. According to many reports, a ogg file provides better sound quality than a file of the same size in MP3.
• It is also supported by HTML 5.

Video File Formats in RWD

A video file is a collection of images displayed in a sequence representing scenes in motion. Only MP4, WebM, and Ogg video file formats are supported by the HTML 5 standard.

WebM (.webm file extension)

• WebM file format developed by the web giants, Mozilla, Opera, Adobe, and Google.
• WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML 5 video and the HTML 5 audio elements.
• A WEBM file is a compressed video saved in the WebM format, an open, high-quality video standard.
• It stores video compressed using VP8 technology and audio compressed using Ogg Vorbis compression.
• WEBM files are commonly used for delivering online videos using the HTML 5 <video> tag. The WEBM video file format is used for HTML 5 video streaming sites, such as YouTube.
• WEBM video files are relatively small in size, and as such are not as high in terms of quality as some of the other file types on this list.

MP4 (.mp4 file extension)

• MP4 file format developed by the Moving Pictures Expert Group based on QuickTime.
• MP4 file format, also commonly known as MPEG-4 Part 14 or MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding), is a digital multimedia container format most commonly used to store video and audio.
• MP4 file format is basically a container which holds audio and video files that are digitally encoded and it allows streaming over the Internet.
• It is a lossless file format which makes it ideal for editing as it doesn’t lose quality through subsequent edits and file saves.
• It is higher in quality than WEBM files, but tend to be larger in file size.
• Commonly used in newer video cameras and TV hardware. MPEG-4 is a versatile file format that can include audio, video, images and animations.

Ogg (.ogg file extension)

• Ogg file format developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and supported by HTML 5.
• Ogg files are an open-source, free and alternative to MPG files
• It is used for high-quality videos to be streamed via the internet.
• Though ogg files are used for streaming, they are higher in quality than WEBM files – meaning they will take longer to be delivered to the end-user.
• Due to .ogg files being open sourced, they can be used in a variety of applications, including GPS receivers and media players.