List of file formats: Difference between revisions

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This is a list of file formats often seen on computers. Filename extensions are usually noted in parenthesis if they differ from the format name or abbreviation.

Audio file formats
- Lossless
  - Uncompressed
    - AIFF
    - au file format
    - CDDA
    - IFF-8SVX
    - IFF-16SV
    - RAW (raw samples without any header or sync)
    - WAV
  - Compressed
    - FLAC (free as in freedom lossless codec of the Ogg project)
    - Apple Lossless Encoding (M4A)
- Lossy
  - MP2
  - MP3
  - Speex (Ogg project, specialized for voice, low bitrates)
  - Vorbis (Ogg project, free and similar in principle to MP3)
  - Windows Media Audio (WMA)
  - AAC (M4A, AAC)
  - MPC
- Music formats
  - MID (standard MIDI file; most often just notes and controls but occasionally also sample dumps)
  - NSF (bytecode program to play NES music)
  - MOD (Soundtracker and Protracker sample and melody modules)
  - S3M (ScreamTracker 3 module, with a few more effects and a dedicated volume column)
  - XM (FastTracker module, adding instrument envelopes)
  - IT (Impulse Tracker module, adding compressed samples, note-release actions, and more effects including a resonant filter)
  - MT2 (MadTracker 2 module. It could be resumed as being XM and IT combined with more features like track effects and automation.)
  - MNG (BGM for the Creatures game series, starting from Creatures 2; a free editor and player is available)

Document file formats - These are ways of storing mainly text
- ASCII, Unicode (.txt)
- Amigaguide
- HTML (.html, .htm) and XHTML (.xhtml)
- Radix-64
- RTF
- TeX
- Troff
- Word (.doc)
- OpenOffice (employs XML) (http://xml.openoffice.org/)

Spreadsheets
- XSL

Databases
- DBF
- MDB

Raster image (see also graphics file formats)
- BMP
- GIF (often avoided because of patent problems)
- MSP (file format used by old versions of Microsoft paint, replaced with bmp in Windows 3.0)
- IFF-ILBM (.ilbm .lbm .iff)
- JNG (single-frame MNG with JPEG data and possibly an alpha channel)
- JPEG JFIF (.jpg or .jpeg) (lossy, recommended for display of photographic images)
- PCX
- PNG (lossless, recommended for display and edition of graphic images)
- PPM
- PSD
- TGA
- TIFF (.tif or .tiff) (usually lossless, many variant exist including lossy one)

Vector image formats (see also graphics file formats)
- CGM Computer Graphics Metafile an ISO Standard
- CMX
- DXF
- SVG (employs XML)
- Scene description languages (3D vector image formats)
  - MOVIE.BYU
  - RenderMan
  - VRML
  - X3D

Object code file formats
- a.out (Unix and GCC only, not technically a file format)
- ELF
- MZ EXE (.exe; used in DOS)
- PE (.exe; used in Microsoft Windows and some other systems)
- COM files, used in DOS
- Mach-O (Mach based systems, notably native format of Mac OS X)
- PEF (Recent Mac OS versions, up to Mac OS 9. Compatible with Mac OS X, but not natively)

Page description languages
- DVI
- PCL
- PDF
- PostScript (.ps, .ps.gz)

configurations, metadata
- CSS

Data exchange
- SDXF (Structured Data Exchange Format)

Tabulated data
- tab
- Comma-separated values (CSV)
- dif (accessible by many spreadsheet applications)

Archiving and compression formats
- ace
- arj
- bzip2 (.bz2)
- cab
- deb
- gzip (.gz)
- LHA (.lzh)
- lzo
- lzx
- Parchive (.par, .par2)
- rar
- tar
- .tar.gz (gzipped tar file)
- zoo
- 7z
- zip

Video file formats
- AAF (mostly intended to hold edit decisions and rendering information, but can also contain compressed media essence)
- Animated GIF (simple animation; often avoided because of patent problems)
- ASF (ASF is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-4 is common. Video in ASF-containers is also called Windows Media Video (WMV))
- AVI (AVI is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-1 and a variant of MPEG-4 are common)
- Macromedia Flash (.swf) (complex vector-based animation with sound and interactivity)
- Matroska (*.mkv) (Matroska is a container format, which enables any video format such as MPEG-4 or XviD to be used along with other content such as subtitles and detailed meta information)
- MNG (mainly simple animation containing PNG and JPEG objects, often somewhat more complex than animated GIF)
- MPEG
- MXF
- Tarkin (Ogg project, all Tarkin files are Ogg files)
- Theora (Ogg project, all Theora files are Ogg files)
- OGM (OGM is a container format created so that Ogg Vorbis could be used for the audio of a video as this could not be done with AVI)
- QuickTime (QuickTime is a container format, which enables any form of compression to be used; Sorenson codec is the most common)
- RealMedia

GIS file formats
- DEM (USGS) (US Geo Survey terrestrial elevation data)

Disk images (a file system used as a random-access archive file inside another file system)
- .img
- .cue/bin
- .iso
- .dmg (Mac OS X)
- .smi (Mac OS)

Native data (registered objective parametrs .dat .cop .par)

@@ Line 35: / Line 35: @@
 ** [[ASCII]], [[Unicode]] (.txt)
 ** [[Amigaguide]]
-** [[HTML]] (.html, .htm)
+** [[HTML]] (.html, .htm) and [[XHTML]] (.xhtml)
 ** [[Radix-64]]
 ** [[RTF]]
@@ Line 41: / Line 41: @@
 ** [[Troff]]
 ** [[Microsoft Word|Word]] (.doc)
+** OpenOffice (employs [[XML]]) (http://xml.openoffice.org/)
-** [[XML]]
+* Spreadsheets
+** XSL
+* Databases
+** DBF
+** MDB
 * [[Raster graphics|Raster]] image (see also [[graphics file formats]])
@@ Line 61: / Line 68: @@
 ** [[CMX]]
 ** [[DXF]]
-** [[SVG]]
+** [[SVG]] (employs [[XML]])
 **[[Scene description language|Scene description languages]] (3D vector image formats)
 *** [[MOVIE.BYU]]
@@ Line 83: / Line 90: @@
 ** [[PostScript]] (.ps, .ps.gz)
+* configurations, metadata
-* Hypertext description
-** [[HTML]] and [[XHTML]]
 ** [[Cascading Style Sheets|CSS]]
 * Data exchange
-** [[XML]]
 ** [[SDXF]] (Structured Data Exchange Format)