This chapter provides a short primer on video files, formats and - codecs â because it is often cause for confusion: + codecs – because it is often cause for confusion:
A video file is a container. It usually contains one - video track and one or more audio tracks. - How these tracks are stored in the file is defined by the + video track, one or more audio tracks, and possibly + subtitle tracks, chapters… + The way these tracks are stored in the file is defined by the file format. Common formats are avi, mov, ogg, mkv, mpeg, mpeg-ts, mp4, flv, or vob.
@@ -20,7 +21,7 @@Not all codecs can be packed into a given format. For example the mpeg format is limited to mpeg2, mpeg4 and mp3 codecs (not entirely true). - DVDs do have stringent limitations as well. The opposite would be .avi; + DVDs do have stringent limitations as well. The opposite would be .avi: pretty much every audio/video codec combination can be contained in an avi file-format.
@@ -47,13 +48,12 @@The export dialog includes presets for common format and codec - combinations (such as DVD, web-video,..). If in doubt use one of the - presets. + combinations (such as DVD, web-video,..). If in doubt, one of the + presets should be used.
- As last note: every time a video is transcoded, the quality can only get + As a last note: every time a video is transcoded, the quality can only get worse. Hence for the final mastering/muxing process, one should - always to back and use the original source of the video. + always go back and use the original source of the video.
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