contianers?

[nooby_god]

I don't get this entire contianer thing. The contianer is the extension of the file?

So I can take an xvid movie stream and an ogg audio stream shove it into an ogm stream using one of the tools. Then i can take that .ogm file and any media player can play it? (assuming I have the codecs installed)
If that's not what a contianer is, can some one explain it to me?

[celtic_druid]

A container isn't just a file extension, although the extension should normally tell you what container it is. However people rename wmv's to mpg's, mpg's to avi's, etc. all the time.

To playback your ogm file you need an ogm splitter, vorbis decoder (assuming vorbis audio) and something that can decode XviD.

ogg is a container itself by the way.

[nooby_god]

Originally posted by celtic_druid
A container isn't just a file extension, although the extension should normally tell you what container it is. However people rename wmv's to mpg's, mpg's to avi's, etc. all the time.

To playback your ogm file you need an ogm splitter, vorbis decoder (assuming vorbis audio) and something that can decode XviD.

ogg is a container itself by the way.

y do i need an ogm splitter? Also if put my ogm contianed file on a portable device that can decode vorbis and xvid. would it play?

[stephanV]

A container is a wrapper that "binds" media streams together. While doing this, often (not always!) streams are chopped up in little pieces and interleaved so you have the audio and video parts that more or less have to be played at the same time close to eachother in the file. This improves playback and makes it easier to seek through the file.

Just as there in real life are many ways to hold things together (plastic bags, carton boxes, etc.), there are also many ways of putting media streams together (AVI, OGM, MP4, Matroska, etc.)

Of course, to read out those streams you need to know exactly how they were put together. This is where the splitter comes in to place: it splits the media streams from eachother so they can be decoded. So for AVI you need an AVI splitter, for OGM an OGM splitter and so on.

So to answer your question: it would only play if your portable is capable of reading OGM files, not just decoding XviD and Vorbis.

[bond]

a container gives you the possibility to combine different audio/video/subtitle streams into one file (eg combining a mp3 audio stream with a xvid video stream to one file by using the .avi container - different containers have different dis/advantages)

of course during playback the player would need to understand the audio stream, the video stream and the container (as different containers use different technologies so to say. technologies the player might not understand)

normally playback works the following way:
1) you feed the player with the .avi file, which contains mp3 and xvid
2) the player has to seperate the audio and video and extract it from the container (thats called "splitting" or "parsing")
3) than the player feeds the plain audio and video stream (extracted from the container) to the mp3 and xvid decoder (thats what is known as "codec")

so to say to play any multimedia container file you have to have:
1) a splitter that is able to split the a/v from the container
2) decoders (codecs) that are able to decode/play the a/v

now most people use .avi, and for being able to play .avi you dont have to install a splitter as the .avi splitter is already installed by default on windows
but if you want to play another container file (eg .ogm) you will have to install the needed splitter as windows doesnt have one installed already for it

regarding your question about portable devices:
as described a player has to support the a/v streams plus the used container. i doubt that any hardware player currently supports .ogm

[nooby_god]

thank you very much bond. Is there a list of contianers with their advantages and disadvantages somewhere?

[bond]

:search: :readfaq: