Playback formats include:

264 - codec H.264/AVC is used to transmit high-definition television in a number of digital and satellite platforms, also as one of the primary codecs in QuickTime software.

3G2 - commonly used in modern mobile phones, supported by a few players.

3GP - as above, very similar to 3G2, but it has better sound and image handling.

AMV - video file format developed for portable players. In comparison with other formats the compression ratio is low, but because the picture is in low resolution, the AMV files are smaller than DVD or VCD. The advantage of this is longer battery power for your equipment.

ASF - a multimedia container developed by Microsoft for Windows Media.

AVI - audio-visual data container. It was introduced in 1992 by Microsoft as part of its strategy to adapt Windows to support multimedia, which was part of Video for Windows technology.

AVS - was initiated by the Chinese government. Commercial success of AVS standard would reduce for China the costs of licenses purchased from foreign companies and would increase the importance of the electronics industry in China.

DIVX - a method of compressing the image in movies. Newer versions are compatible with MPEG-4 Part 2, allowing you to record onto a regular CD movies of about 90 minutes and of almost DVD quality. Also used to transmit video over the Internet.

FLV - the Flash Video movie file is used to distribute video files over the Internet. It was created by Macromedia, and is being developed by Adobe Systems, after they took the company over in April 2005.

M2TS - format commonly used in HD video on Blu-ray and AVCHD.

MKV - Matroska - Multimedia container for storage video or audio formats in one file. Matroska files can contain subtitles, along with audio and video, and the menu (such as the title menus found on standard movie DVDs). The project was established in 2003.

MOV - this is the QuickTime format. MOV files are often created in iMovie on the Mac, but other video programs can also record movies in this format. You can upload, without any additional conversion, these files to YouTube.

MP4 - MPEG-4 Part 14 is a multimedia container.

MPEG - standard for audio and video encoding, and approved by ISO as a commonly used format for recording audio and video.

MPG - multimedia file extension containing audio and video streams. Most .mpg files contain streams in MPEG-1 format.

OGM - container developed by Tobias Waldvogel based on the OGG container.

QT - a multimedia container file format developed by Apple.

RMVB - container which is an extended version of the RealMedia container. It has the ability to store data streams at a variable rate. It is characterized by high efficiency compression, in comparison with other previously used codecs.

RM - RealMedia is a container format developed by RealNetworks. It is usually used to store RealAudio and RealVideo streamings, and is also often used for streaming on the Internet.

WMV - Windows Media Video - Video compression format developed by Microsoft.

AC3 - Audio codec used on most DVDs. Commonly known as Dolby Digital Audio Compression-3, Dolby Digital or A/52.

AAC - Compression algorithm for audio data. Its specification was published in 1997. AAC was designed as a successor of MP3. It offers better sound quality in similar data size.

AIFF - audio file format based on the IFF (Electronic Arts Interchange File Format) cooperation with Apple.

AMR - recording format for audio files, used in mobile phones.

APE - Monkey's Audio file extension - lossless audio codec. It reduces the file size from 40% to 50%.

CDA - a standard digital audio recording on CD.

FLAC - lossless audio compression format of the OGG family of codecs.

M3U - a file format used for storing lists of songs or music radio stations for music players on your computer or portable players.

MID - MIDI format file extension (Musical Instruments Digital Interface). Due to its small file size, it is often used to create background music for web pages, automatically played when viewing in your browser. This format is characterized by its small size - a few minutes of music may be contained in a file size of 30-40 kb. Downloading such a file does not increase the overall loading time of the entire page.

MP3 - the popular audio compression format.

MPC - audio compression format, based on algorithms for MPEG Layer-2 (MP2)

OGG - data streams container format popularized by the Xiph.org Foundation, created to support the development of free software for multimedia encoding and decoding.

WAV - audio file format developed by Microsoft and IBM. WAV equivalent for Macintosh is known as AIFF.

WMA - an audio compression format developed by Microsoft. The intentions of the producer were to compete with the MP3 format.