What is the file format?
File Format is the layout of the information that is encoded into bits for storage in the digital storage medium. It shows how the information is structured and the type of data that the file contains. File formats may be either proprietary or free and unpublished or open. There are various file formats like video file format, text-based file format, binary file format, etc. Video file format is a type of file format that is used to store digital video data on the computer. Videos are generally stored in lossy compression to reduce the file size. Video file contains video data in video coding format and audio data in the audio coding format. There different types of video file formats supported by different platforms. MOV and MP4 have commonly used video file formats.
About MP4
MP4 is also called MPEG-4 Part 14 which is the second version of MP4 file format which was released in 2003 and developed by International organization for Standardization. It is a digital multimedia container format commonly used to store video and audio. MP4 is developed on the basis of the MOV file as it uses lossy compression to minimize the file size. It is a digital multimedia format that contains synchronization information subtitles, multimedia, and metadata such as titles, images, etc. in one container. MPEG 4 file with audio only generally have .m4a extension and MP4 file with both video and audio have .mp4 extension.
About MOV
MOV is similar to MP4 video file format which is a common multimedia container file format developed by Apple and compatible with MAC and Windows. This multimedia container is used to stores movies, video files, and data in a quick time file format. It also uses lossy compression to reduce the size to hold the videos. This makes minimum video quality loss after the compression. MOV file contains tracks which are responsible for storing data like video, audio, and text and maintains the hierarchical structure. MOV combines multiple audio and video independently.
Difference between MOV and MP4
Both the MOV and MP4 file formats have the same video quality if using the same codec. There is a slight difference between MOV and MP4 file format. As an international compression standard MP4 is better planned with more tagging options as compare to MOV that helps MP4 to employ more platforms outside the MAC whether it is OS, media player or desktop applications. This feature of MP4 leads to the broad scope and make more flexible as compare to MOV. MP4 video output quality is high as compare to DVD as it uses advanced video coding technology and Apple’s advanced audio coding to improve old audio container format. MP4 video files are prone to corruption as you can fix your inaccessible or corrupt videos.
Which one you will choose MP4 or MOV?
Both MP4 and MOV are multimedia Containers. It depends on you where you are using both of the formats. If you are working on MAC machine, MOV will be safer and efficient because MOV is supposed to be high quality whether it used for playback or video editing by professional purpose. If you are working with Non-Apple devices like Windows, Linux, Ubuntu then MP4 will best option because it supports various devices with multiple bits of data.