You may think of video files as “AVI files” or “MP4 files.” In reality, “AVI” and “MP4″ are just container formats. Just like a ZIP file can contain any sort of file within it, video container formats only define how to store things within them, not what kinds of data are stored. (It’s a little more complicated than that, because not all video streams are compatible with all container formats, but never mind that for now.) A video file usually contains multiple tracks — a video track (without audio), one or more audio tracks (without video), one or more subtitle/caption tracks, and so forth. Tracks are usually interrelated; an audio track contains markers within it to help synchronize the audio with the video, and a subtitle track contains time codes marking when each phrase should be displayed. Individual tracks can have metadata, such as the aspect ratio of a video track, or the language of an audio or subtitle track. Containers can also have metadata, such as the title of the video itself, cover art for the video, episode numbers (for television shows), and so on.

There are lots of video container formats. Some of the most popular include:

• MPEG 4, usually with an .mp4 extension. The MPEG 4 container is based on Apple’s older QuickTime container (.mov). Movie trailers on Apple’s website still use the older QuickTime container, but movies that you rent from iTunes are delivered in an MPEG 4 container, although Apple likes to use the .m4v file extension instead of .mp4.
• Advanced Systems Format, usually with an .asf or .wmv extension. ASF was invented by and is primarily used by Microsoft in their Windows Media Player and their handheld Zune media device.
• Flash Video, usually with an .flv extension. Flash Video is, unsurprisingly, used by Adobe Flash. Prior to Flash 9.0.60.184 (a.k.a. Flash Player 9 Update 3), this was the only container format that Flash supported. More recent versions of Flash also support the MPEG 4 container.
• Matroska, usually with an .mkv extension. Matroska is an open standard, unencumbered by any known patents, and there are open source reference implementations for doing everything you might want to do with MKV files. It is primarily used by Free Software-loving hippies and, oddly enough, pirates who rip high-definition movies and television shows and release them in The Scene.
• Ogg, usually with an .ogv extension. Like Matroska, Ogg is an open standard, open-source-friendly, and unencumbered by any known patents. Like Matroska, it is used primarily by Free Software-loving hippies, but that may begin to change once Mozilla ships their Firefox 3.1 browser. Firefox 3.1 will support — natively, without platform-specific plugins — the Ogg container format, the Ogg video codec (Theora), and the Ogg audio codec (Vorbis). On the desktop, Ogg is supported out-of-the-box by all major Linux distributions, and you can use it on Mac and Windows by installing the QuickTime components or DirectShow filters, respectively.
• Audio Video Interleave, usually with an .avi extension. Also known as “the crappy, obsolete format that just won’t die.” The AVI container format was invented by Microsoft in a simpler time when the fact that computers could play video at all was considered pretty amazing. It does not officially support many of the features of more recent container formats; it does not officially support any sort of video metadata; it does not even officially support most of the modern video and audio codecs in use today. Over time, various companies have tried to extend it in generally incompatible ways to support this or that, and it is still the default container format for popular encoders such as MEncoder.

This is the briefest of overviews; there are literally dozens of other container formats in use today. DV, NUT, 3GP… the list goes on and on. And there are many others littering the landscape of failed or obsolete technologies, from companies that tried to corner the nascent digital video market by defining their own formats.

Wikipedia has a good roundup of video container formats.

It is clear that RIAs offer the potential to fundamentally change the user experience and in doing so, yield significant business benefits. However, in order for RIAs to be widely employed, and for more companies to receive these kinds of returns, technologies to build RIAs will need to appeal to a wider range of developers. The ability to cost effectively create rich, engaging user experiences that support corporate objectives and reach a broader developer audience without sacrificing development productivity require a new generation of RIA tools. These tools are being developed by a large number of organisations with Adobe, Microsoft, Google, Apple and Sun leading the way with the AIR/Flash/Flex combination, Silverlight, Gears, Quicktime and JavaFX respectively.

The new generation of RIA tools being developed by the likes of Adobe and Microsoft must do the following to allow developers to truely harness the power of RIAs in the commercial environment:

1. Allow developers to write applications using familiar development models to utilise and extend their current skills without requiring them to adopt entirely new or different skills
2. Use standard and standards-based technologies
3. Use industry specific programming models and patterns
4. Use and/or leverage the existing IT infrastructure through wrap and reuse rather than rip and replace
5. Provide pervasive, familiar programming models and an expressive user interface across platforms and devices; and
6. Allow developers to create a solution that delivers scalable, secure, high performance solutions that are bandwidth efficient

These new RIA tools will need to provide the features that enhance IT developer’s abilities to be more creative and to accomplish RIA development with the same or less effort than the tools they use to create other types of applications. What is required are the tools that can help developers achieve these objectives without relying on only HTML or other scripting languages, or having to learn a completely new development approach.

Two vendors which have the technology and capaibility to fully deliver Rich Internet Applications are Adobe and Microsoft. With Microsoft’s Silverlight and XAML, developing rich internet applications to run on Windows platforms will progress at a fast rate. In turn, Adobe has had a head start with the aquisition of Macromedia and the subsequent addition of Flash and Flex to its product offering. Flash and its relative ubiquity across platforms and devices ensures that RIA development and production will be accessible to a large user base and as such puts Adobe at a distinct advantage over Microsoft.