The tables below show the supported file formats for audio and video files.

Audio file formats

File format Extension More information
AIFF Audio file .aiff Audio Interchange File Format This sound format originally was used on Apple and Silicon Graphics (SGI) computers. Waveform files are stored in an 8-bit monaural (mono or one channel) format, which is not compressed and can result in large files.
AU Audio file .au UNIX Audio This file format typically is used to create sound files for UNIX computers or the Web.
MIDI file .mid or .midi Musical Instrument Digital Interface This is a standard format for the interchange of musical information between musical instruments, synthesizers, and computers.
MP3 Audio file .mp3 MPEG Audio Layer 3 This is a sound file that has been compressed by using the MPEG Audio Layer 3 codec, which was developed by the Fraunhofer Institute.
Windows Audio file .wav Wave Form This audio file format stores sounds as waveforms. Depending on various factors, one minute of sound can occupy as little as 644 kilobytes or as much as 27 megabytes of storage.
Windows Media Audio file .wma Windows Media Audio This is a sound file that has been compressed by using the Microsoft Windows Media Audio codec, a digital audio coding scheme developed by Microsoft that is used to distribute recorded music, usually over the Internet.

Video file formats

File format Extension More information
Windows Media file .asf Advanced Streaming Format This file format stores synchronized multimedia data and can be used to stream audio and video content, images, and script commands over a network.
Windows Video file .avi Audio Video Interleave This is a multimedia file format for storing sound and moving pictures in Microsoft Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) format. It is one of the most common formats because audio or video content that is compressed with a wide variety of codecs can be stored in an .avi file.
Movie file .mpg or .mpeg Moving Picture Experts Group This is an evolving set of standards for video and audio compression developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group. This file format was designed specifically for use with Video-CD and CD-i media.
Windows Media Video file .wmv Windows Media Video This file format compresses audio and video by using the Windows Media Video codec, a tightly compressed format that requires a minimal amount of storage space on your computer's hard disk.

Note Although your sound or movie file may have the same file extension as one listed above, it may not play correctly if the correct version of the codec is not installed, or if the file is not encoded in a format that is recognized by your version of Microsoft Windows. Encoding is the process of converting data into a stream of ones and zeros.

See also: