List of H264 video containers

[David1105]

What kinds of containers that can contain H.264 video?

MP4, AVI, MOV? What else?

To streaming H264 video over Internet, what kind of servers to use currently?

For a H264 encoded video to be streamed over Internet, can it be either MP4, or MOV, or have to be FLV if using Flash Media Server?

Can a H264 video be in FLV format at all?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

What kinds of containers that can contain H.264 video?

MP4, AVI, MOV? What else?

MOV, Matroska (MKV) and M2TS.

Can a H264 video be in FLV format at all?

Nope. Flash supports H.264 now, but only from MP4 container. (EDIT: Obviously H.264 in FLV container is supported as well)

Sample:
http://mplayer.somestuff.org/misc/flv_test/

[Dark Shikari]

Nope. Flash supports H.264 now, but only from MP4 container.Incorrect, it supports it in FLV too.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Incorrect, it supports it in FLV too.

Oh, really? Then it was my mistake...

[kemuri-_9]

I personally wouldn't count AVI as a valid h.264 video container.
AVI's a fatally old container from back in February 1996 (and that's revision 2.0/OpenDML)

not even XviD/DivX were ever meant to be in AVI.
AVI has no standard capability for b-frames,
but of course that was hacked around since you can find DivX/XviD AVIs all over the place...

AVC can be in AVI but that's even a more intricate hack than XviD/DivX, and still fails when b-pyramid is involved (iirc).
for the sake of encoding sanity, don't ever do AVC in AVI, please...

[LoRd_MuldeR]

I personally wouldn't count AVI as a valid h.264 video container.
AVI's a fatally old container from back in February 1996 (and that's revision 2.0/OpenDML)

not even XviD/DivX were ever meant to be in AVI.
AVI has no standard capability for b-frames,
but of course that was hacked around since you can find DivX/XviD AVIs all over the place...

AVC can be in AVI but that's even a more intricate hack than XviD/DivX, and still fails when b-pyramid is involved (iirc).
for the sake of encoding sanity, don't ever do AVC in AVI, please...

However you must keep in mind that most problems that AVI is blamed for actually come from VfW.
You can store H.264 in AVI without using VfW (e.g. via Avidemux or MEncoder) and most players will play such "improper" files 100% fine (e.g. MPlayer or MPC).
Last but not least you can re-mux your H.264 stream from AVI to MP4 or MKV at any time. So don't be too much afraid of AVI...

Not that I want to encourage anybody to store H.264 in AVI. Don't do this! :p

[gruntster]

What kinds of containers that can contain H.264 video?

OGM is about the only other well known one that hasn't already been mentioned.

Also this may be useful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_container_formats

[David1105]

Incorrect, it supports it in FLV too.


Does this mean that Flash Media Server support streaming H264 videos in MP4 or MOV or MKV containers directly, besides in FLV one?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Does this mean that Flash Media Server support streaming H264 videos in MP4 or MOV or MKV containers directly, besides in FLV one?

I know that H.264 in MP4 is supported for sure. According to Dark Shikari the FLV container is supported for H.264 too.

But unless proven otherwise, I highly doubt that Flash supports MOV or MKV containers...

[CruNcher]

MP4, AVI, MOV, MPG, TS, M2TS, FLV, MKV, VOB, EVO, PVA, OGM
those are the containers i found H.264 streams embedded into

[benwaggoner]

Silverlight will also support H.264 and AAC in an ASF file or stream, for compatibility with the existing Windows Media ecosystem for live streaming. The basic mechanism to do this using the Windows Media Format SDK is described here, and we'll get more info up later:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa391061(VS.85).aspx

We'll of course support the standard .mp4 container as well, via progressive download. IIS 7 Media Pack, with its web playlists, bitrate throttling, and random access via byterange seek work fine with MPEG-4 progressive download.

http://www.iis.net/default.aspx?tabid=22

[mitsubishi]

That's interesting to know Ben. Are markers supported in mp4 also?

[Joniii]

TV Pack 2008 update for Vista Media Center has new container for recorded TV. It's .WTV and can have atleast MPEG-2 and H.264.

[Shinigami-Sama]

Silverlight will also support H.264 and AAC in an ASF file or stream, for compatibility with the existing Windows Media ecosystem for live streaming. The basic mechanism to do this using the Windows Media Format SDK is described here, and we'll get more info up later:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa391061(VS.85).aspx

We'll of course support the standard .mp4 container as well, via progressive download. IIS 7 Media Pack, with its web playlists, bitrate throttling, and random access via byterange seek work fine with MPEG-4 progressive download.

http://www.iis.net/default.aspx?tabid=22
any chance on twisting some arms for mkv?

[benwaggoner]

That's interesting to know Ben. Are markers supported in mp4 also?
I'm not sure what we'll get done for that by our Q1 release.

We support markers in ASF today, FWIW, and those should work fine with H.264 in ASF.

[benwaggoner]

any chance on twisting some arms for mkv?
Not a big format for web publishing, I have to admit :).

But this is something that could be developed by a third party to run inside the Silverlight sandbox.

The new MediaStreamSource API enables file parsers and protocols to be written in managed code to run inside of Silverlight. So, a MSS implementaiton for MKV could be used, which would pass on the audio and video compressed bistreams to the Silverlight decoders, and extracting captions and other metadata to be rendered via Silverlight as well.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.media.mediastreamsource_members(VS.95).aspx