What Is MP4?

Date First Published: 31st July 2023

Topic: Computer Systems

Subtopic: Computer Software

Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions

Difficulty: Medium

Difficulty Level: 5/10

CONTENTS

How To Play MP4 Files?
File Extensions
Difference Between MP4, MOV, and MPEG-4
History

Learn about what MP4 is in this article.

MP4 is a widely used multimedia format that can store high-quality audio and video. It can also be used to store other data, including metadata, subtitles and static images. Since MP4 is an international standard, it is compatible with most devices and can be opened by most media players. MP4 has less compression options than MKV, but greater compression features than AVI to keep the file size small, whilst retaining quality.

Due to its compatibility with streaming protocols, HTML5, user devices, and programs, as well as its relatively high video quality after compression, MP4 is an ideal multimedia format for streaming and sharing videos online. In fact, it is the recommended standard for uploading videos to social media sites, like YouTube and Vimeo. This is unlike AVI, which uses less compression than other video formats to ensure the best quality, making file sizes very large.

How To Play MP4 Files?

MP4 is a widely compatible format with most media players. Windows and MacOS come with a built-in media player, including Microsoft Windows Media Player and Apple QuickTime. MP4 files can also be opened with other media players, including VLC Media Player and Adobe Premiere Pro, which are compatible with both Windows and macOS.

Since the system media player on iOS and Android supports MP4 files, users can double tap the files to play them. If more advanced playback options are required, a third-party app can be downloaded and installed, such as VLC for iOS, VLC for Android, J2 Interactive MX Player (Android), and Olimsoft OPlayer (iOS).

Most media players, including VLC Media Player can also convert MP4 files to other formats, including .WEBM, .WAV, .OGG, .MP3, and more.

File Extensions

MP4 files that contain both audio and video data use the standard ".mp4" file extension, but there are some other file extensions below used to indicate the type of content:

MP4 files that only contain audio often use the .M4A extension .
MP4 files that only contain video data sometimes use the .M4V extension.
iPhones use MPEG-4 audio for their ringtones but use the .m4r extension instead of the .m4a extension.
Raw MPEG-4 Visual bitstreams are named .m4v but this extension is sometimes used for video in MP4 container format.
Audiobook and podcast files, which also contain metadata can use the extension .m4a, but often use the .m4b extension.

Difference Between MP4, MOV, and MPEG-4

The MP4 and MOV formats are very similar, but the main difference between these two formats is that MOV is a format developed by Apple and MP4 is an international standard that is overall more commonly used. Since MP4 files are compatible with more devices, it is the preferred format for social media platforms and streaming protocols. Some platforms may convert to MP4 before uploading.

Also, MP4 files are usually more compressed and smaller in size than MOV files. Since MOV files are larger, but better quality, they are more commonly used in video editing and not used as much in streaming or uploading to social media.

Although MP4 and MPEG-4 are sometimes used synonymously, they are not the same things. The main difference between MP4 and MPEG-4 is that MP4 is the multimedia format and MPEG-4 is the standard for encoding the video content within MP4 files.

History

The MP4 format was introduced in 2001 and officially released as a standard by the MPEG. The MPEG-4 file format, version 1 was published in 2001 as ISO/IEC 14496-1:2001, which is a revision of the MPEG-4 Part 1.