file formats for my program?

[ValorSolo]

I've written a little program to catalog video files and play them in the selected player with a single click.
As of now, it supports mkv, mpg, mp4, wmv, flv, avi.
What other file formats should I include?
I suppose vob would be an obvious one.
How about iso?

[mariush]

MOV is ugly but still used... .qt is also found but rarely ...

RM is still relatively popular...

OGV or whatever ogg video/theora is nowadays (used a lot by archive.org and that tv station that airs and offers for downloads recordings from the US congress/senate), webm...

make sure you detect correctly m2v, m1v, ts, m2ts, avc streams made by digital cameras...

[ValorSolo]

Thanks for replying.
I've updated my list to include the following.
avi, flv, mkv, mp4, mpg, wmv, vob, swf, rm, rmvb, mov, asf, w4v, m2v, m2t, ts, m2ts, mts, avc, ogm, ogv, qt, avc

Am I still missing any commonly used formats?

[mariush]

.divx (made by divx programs)
.camrec (recordings made by camtasia screen recorder): http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fileextensions/f/camrecfile.htm

I'm sure there's more but I can't think of them..

3gp ...

See a list of containers... not sure if it's comprehensive but nevertheless good inspiration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_container_formats

[Mug Funky]

ffmpeg.exe -formats :)

[kurkosdr]

Just take a peek inside Media Info (http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/el)'s code (but don't copy it outright, as it's GPLed). All formats known to man are in there.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Just take a peek inside Media Info (http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/el)'s code (but don't copy it outright, as it's GPLed). All formats known to man are in there.

I can highly recommend to use MediaInfo anyway!

It's much more reliable to let MediaInfo detect the actual file format from the file's content rather than guessing the format from the file's name.

File extensions are neither reliable nor are they unambiguous.

I can rename a Word Document (.doc) file to "foobar.avi", but does that make it a video file? Qt Linguist saves translations as .ts, but are these MPEG-TS files?

Nope, of course not :p

[ValorSolo]

Thanks for all the replies.
My app is not very useful to most, as I made it for my Dad, who has very limited use of his hands.
Double-clicking is almost impossible for him, so this lets him watch his videos without the need to open directories or double-click files.
Right-clicking and selecting open is not so easy for him, either.

After using the app for myself, I enjoy it's ease of use, too.
This lead me to share it with others.
But I wanted it to play all the most common file types, even though I never use anything but mkv.
I convert my camcorder files, youtube files and DVD backups to mkv.

Anyways, thanks again for all the info.

[XXXheros]

I think youb should also add RMVB, SWF, and 3GP, I think these video formats are all popular and widely used.

[Ghitulescu]

I've written a little program to catalog video files and play them in the selected player with a single click.
As of now, it supports mkv, mpg, mp4, wmv, flv, avi.
What other file formats should I include?

I'm afraid you have to answer yourself this question. For me there are already 3 formats too many.

It really depends on what formats do you already have or have access to. There are very few formats a consumer have access: DVD+BD, let's forget the VideoCD, SAT recordings and Camcorder recordings (including here Cellphone and photocamera recordings). So, it will be:
- MPG (sources: all DVD, part SAT, part Camcorder, part BD)
- IFO+VOB (DVD)
- AVI (part Camcorder - MiniDV, some photocameras)
- MTS/M2TS/TS (SAT - both SD and HD, sometimes with a different extension like TRP, most BD, part Camcorder)
- MP4 (mostly compact camera and cellphone videos)
- maybe MKV, as it can store both SD and HD with a nice range of features. With a bit of work, you can store all your legally obtained media in MKV containers and provide your father a unitarian interface, without the need to resort to unsafe codec packs. So if you can afford the time, just repack all your media in MKV and provide support for this file format only.

You don't want to include more, unless your software is just a GUI to a CLI player (like mplayer), because of the complexity of the job - see the sources for VLC and mplayer. Should your cellphone/camera film in MOV or RM or 3GP or whatever you might include them as well. Including RMVB, as suggested, is problematic on all non-real-player environments and it's used almost exclusively for anime (animes have this nasty problem of changing fps and interlacing patterns).

All other formats (MKV, AVI, DIVX, XVID) are obtained from the first, sometimes with time-consuming reconversions, and for me cast a shadow of doubt on their obtention.