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> they added .mov in their list of file types and had aliased it to .mp4 format That’s weird. Why’d they do that. They should make a separate entry for mov and

> they added .mov in their list of file types and had aliased it to .mp4 format That’s weird. Why’d they do that. They should make a separate entry for mov and associate it with video/quicktime Guess it might be something related to https://stackoverflow.com/a/44785870 https://stackoverflow.com/a/44785870 but like they point out, mov is a container format that can contain one of many different codecs used. And isn’t mp4 just a container too? Referring to mov files as video/mp4 seems straight up incorrect to me

robertony 5y ago
Modern mov files are just mp4 containers.
- codetrotter 5y ago
  I don’t think that’s quite right is it? As I understand, mp4 is based on mov. But they still very much are distinct container formats, and an implementation of the mp4 standard would likely not be able to correctly read mov files as is, would it?
  - banana_giraffe 5y ago
    They're very close. The ISO base media file format was directly based off of QuickTime container format. If you look at a .mov file and a .mp4 file in a ISO bmff viewer, you'll generally see the only difference is the ftyp box is different ("qt " for .mov, "isom" for .mp4). Indeed, if you ask ffmpeg to make a .mov file and .mp4 file of the same content, literally the only difference is the contents of the "ftyp" box, every other byte is identical.
    - _Gyan_ 5y ago
      > literally the only difference is the contents of the "ftyp" box, every other byte is identical. Not quite. There are some boxes acceptable in one but not the other. Strings inside MOOV are length-prefixed in MOV but null-terminated in ISOBMFF. There are a variety of differences like that. The set of codecs allowed, also differs between the two.
  - wolfd 5y ago
    They're pretty much interchangable. Video frameworks like gstreamer just give you qtdemux to parse .mov, .mp4, and even .m4a or .m4v (which are just MP4s with different file extensions).

robertony 5y ago

Modern mov files are just mp4 containers.

codetrotter 5y ago
I don’t think that’s quite right is it? As I understand, mp4 is based on mov. But they still very much are distinct container formats, and an implementation of the mp4 standard would likely not be able to correctly read mov files as is, would it?
- banana_giraffe 5y ago
  They're very close. The ISO base media file format was directly based off of QuickTime container format. If you look at a .mov file and a .mp4 file in a ISO bmff viewer, you'll generally see the only difference is the ftyp box is different ("qt " for .mov, "isom" for .mp4). Indeed, if you ask ffmpeg to make a .mov file and .mp4 file of the same content, literally the only difference is the contents of the "ftyp" box, every other byte is identical.
  - _Gyan_ 5y ago
    > literally the only difference is the contents of the "ftyp" box, every other byte is identical. Not quite. There are some boxes acceptable in one but not the other. Strings inside MOOV are length-prefixed in MOV but null-terminated in ISOBMFF. There are a variety of differences like that. The set of codecs allowed, also differs between the two.
- wolfd 5y ago
  They're pretty much interchangable. Video frameworks like gstreamer just give you qtdemux to parse .mov, .mp4, and even .m4a or .m4v (which are just MP4s with different file extensions).