Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2016 April 26

Welcome to the Wikipedia Computing Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

April 26

mp3/mp4 uses for audio/videos

Could we use mp3 for compressing video as well? Why is mp4's use for video more common that it's use for audio? According to mp4, it could compress audio too.--Scicurious (talk) 21:26, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

MP3 is actually part of MPEG-1 which is used for videos. It was used for Video CDs. MP3 is free of patents now. But MPEG-4 may still have some, so it costs more to implement. Audio only can be use with MPEG-4 compress and you may see a ".m4a" suffix on a file that is for audio. Apparently iTunes Plus tracks from iTunes Store could be in this form, also with .m4p extension when encrypted. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:20, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

They're two different things. MP3 is an audio codec. The "MP3" name is derived from the full name of the standard: "MPEG-2 Audio Layer III". MP4 is a name given to the container file format specified as part of the MPEG-4 standard (specifically, "MPEG-4 Part 14"). I certainly can see where the confusion comes from. The MPEG could have come up with more descriptive names for their stuff. Oh, and if you're wondering what happened to MPEG-3, it was aborted after the group decided it wasn't necessary. So MPEG-4 is the next released MPEG standard after MPEG-2. --71.110.8.102 (talk) 22:26, 26 April 2016 (UTC)