Today it is impossible to imagine a single user of the Global Network who would not encounter multimedia content almost daily. The most attractive in terms of information and usefulness among such information is video. Television has already faded into the background and, while working or having fun, the user is increasingly turning his attention to video files from the Internet, of which there are a large number of formats of formats today.
Most often, when downloading videos or movies from the Internet, the user has to deal with such types of files as Mpeg4 and Mp4 - this is one and the same, many say. Let's see if this is really so.
The main difference
In fact, there is a difference between MP4 and MPEG4, and it is quite substantial. The main difference is the fact that MPEG4 is the method by which the compression of audio and video data is determined. And MP4 is a data storage format. That is, MP4 is intended and used as a container in which audio and / or video data is stored. Thus, the statement that Mpeg4 and Mp4 are one and the same is somewhat false. We will deal with the purpose of each format.
MPEG-4
The main purpose of MPEG-4 is to use this compression method in broadcast, interactive and conversational environments. Application of the standard makes it possible to use audio and / or video content not only on a periodic basis. In addition, the standard greatly facilitates the integration of content consisting of two channels (audio and video) into the same multimedia scene. All this led to the widespread use of the codec in television and web environments.
Mp4
It cannot be argued that Mpeg4 and Mp4 are one and the same for another reason. MPEG-4 and MP4 are two terms that are easy to confuse with each other, not only because their names differ in just two letters, but also because they are very closely mixed in the world of a huge number of media files. The MPEG4 and MP4 formats as a container for storing data have been widely distributed, not least due to the acceptable ratio of video quality and the size of the resulting files containing data.
Regarding this characteristic of MP4, we can say that the best ratio among other solutions between video quality and its size has made MP4 one of the most common file formats for storing and transmitting multimedia. MP4 is not only used on computers. It has gained immense popularity on several mobile platforms, smartphones, tablet computers, including “smart phones” and “tablets” from Apple.
On all of the above hardware solutions that allow receiving, storing and transmitting multimedia content, MP4 is used as the file format by default. Users who prefer direct and hassle-free reading, as well as recording video files, will always choose MP4, although they may not even know the differences between the container and MPEG-4 and consider that Mpeg4 and Mp4 are the same thing. We can safely say that being a standard video format, MP4 is used almost everywhere, and MPEG-4 is a more specific solution.