MOVIE FORMATS

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Unlike songs, which are usually found as MP3 files, movies are stored in a wide variety of file formats. Because video files can be huge, most people compress videos in the RAR format, which was discussed earlier in this chapter. To add to the confusion, movies draw from a wide variety of codecs— compression mechanisms for packing the video into a certain file format. This means that even if your video player supports a particular video format, it may not support the codec used to compress the video, a problem covered in Chapter 14, in the “Finding Pornography on Newsgroups” section.

Here are some common formats and codecs used for trading movies.

DIVX

Usual contents: Video

Copy protection: No

Official website: http://www.divx.com

Programs used: DivX Player (http://www.divx.com) or any video player with the proper DivX codec installed

Created by DivXNetworks, the DivX codec compresses full-length movies into much smaller sizes. A full-length DVD, for instance, is normally about 6GB when extracted onto a hard drive. Using DivX, users can compress a movie to 600MB, which conveniently fits on a single CD. (DivX bears no relation to DIVX, Circuit City’s failed DVD rental system that involved disposable DVDs.)

MPEG

Usual contents: Video

Copy protection: No

Official website: http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg or http://www.mpeg.org

Programs used: Nearly any video player

MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group) is an international standard for storing sound and video in a digital format. The MPEG-1 standard produces video quality roughly equal to VHS videotape at a resolution of 352 by 240 pixels. MPEG-1 is most often used to store video on CDs and VCDs (video CDs).

MPEG-2 is the standard for DVDs, and it offers better compression than MPEG-1 with a resolution of 720 by 480 pixels. The latest standard, MPEG-4, can scale pictures to play on different devices, such as cell phones and handheld computers.

Nearly every video player can handle MPEG-1 files, making it a popular method of trading movies, although for better file compression and video quality, many files may be stored using the MPEG-2 standard instead.

AVI

Usual contents: Video

Copy protection: No

Official website: None

Programs used: Most video-playing and editing programs

Microsoft created the popular Audio Video Interleave (AVI) format, only to abandon it when they wanted to include Digital Rights Management. Many digital camcorders create this format when dumping raw footage onto a hard drive, and it’s one of the more popular formats for movie trading.

MOV

Usual contents: Video, sometimes music

Copy protection: Optional

Official website: http://www.apple.com/quicktime

Programs used: QuickTime player

Apple’s QuickTime media format is the current darling of the film trailer industry, and these files mostly contain video, but sometimes have just music. Launched in 1991, the QuickTime format is a Web standard for clips that can be played on many types of computers.

VCD AND SVCD

Usual contents: Video for a CD

Copy protection: None

Official website: http://www.chiariglione.org/mpeg or http://www.mpeg.org

Programs used: Most DVD playing software such as TMPGEnc (http://www.tmpgenc.net )

Short for Video Compact Disc, VCD emerged in 1993 as a way to store video on CDs for playing on computers. Embraced mainly in Asia, the format never took off in the United States or Europe, probably because of piracy concerns and picture quality. (Its early MPEG-1 encoding creates videos about the quality of VHS that fill a quarter of a TV screen.) Most stand-alone DVD players and nearly all computer DVD drives can play the format, and it has enjoyed a renaissance for storing ripped DVD footage. Super Video Compact Disc (SVCD) uses improved compression to store full-screen videos.

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