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by mncolinlee
2990 days ago
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I agree that there needs to be a better proxy for understanding this for average users. It certainly is odd to have the container format as the primary bit of information we convey, but it reflects the information gap between users and developers. I believe the reasoning is that the codec should ideally be invisible and irrelevant information to the average user. How is a user to know he might need to install a special codec to play a video? This is why OS and hardware support across many devices is essential to the success of new formats. This is why the Alliance for Open Media ensures AV1 succeeds across the spectrum of devices available. |
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I don’t think anyone decided to do it like that. It’s just been the way it always was.
Anyway, early on container formats were actually correlated with the codec, or at least the multimedia stack you needed.
Let’s remember the early file extensions:
.avi .rmbv .wmv .mov .flv
Everyone knew what they needed to install to play one of these files. It’s only later, starting with .mkv really, that container formats stopped having anything to do with codecs.
Even so, .mkv used to for a long time just mean h.264 to most users. If you had a device that could play mkvs it could play h.264 as well.
The confusion started full on with HEVC. To many users mkvs suddenly just stopped being playable.
I don’t see any reason to continue this trend. AV1 should just use “.av1”. Any device/program that can play av1 can also handle mkv/webm. And no one will be confused.