What are Video Files?

The Video File format is used to store video data in the form of a digital file on a computer system. Unlike images, video data is always stored in a compressed format in order to reduce the size of the file. Normally, a video file consists of two parts: the video data in a video coding format, alongside the audio data in an audio coding format, both included inside of a container. The container can also contain other video details like subtitles, synchronization information, hyperlinks, meta data, and more.

This category of files also encompasses video project and video information files.

Popular Video File Extensions

DIR — Format: Unknown
Developed by Adobe Systems, the “DIR” file format is used to store a movie or an animation project created with Macromedia Director (now Adobe Director), a multimedia application authoring program. The project file can store the resources for the projects, external file linkages, code for scripting, and some other important project details.
WPL — Format: XML
Developed by Microsoft, files with the “.WPL” or Windows Media Player Playlist file extensions are used to store multimedia playlists. A proprietary file format, “.wpl” contains data in an XML form.

Top Video File Extensions

File Extension	Total Number of Files	Oldest File (Date)	Latest File (Date)
DIR	21	ResCache.dir (04/11/2009)	fonts.dir (02/24/2020)
ACS	12	merlin.acs (09/18/2006)	ROCKY.ACS (05/10/2017)
WPL	16	12_All_Video.wpl (04/24/2017)	naptemplate1.wpl (11/15/2019)
MCC	10	XLTECH.MCC (05/10/2017)	MIMSN.MCC (05/10/2017)
AVI	75	progress.avi (11/02/2006)	GENERIC.AVI (02/17/2020)
CPI	18	ega.cpi (04/14/2008)	info.cpi (02/22/2020)
WVE	5	M1033Eva.tbtdirection.WVE (03/18/2017)	M1033Eva.tbtdirection.WVE (03/18/2017)
H264	1	broadcastpause720.h264 (03/18/2017)	broadcastpause720.h264 (03/04/2020)

What are Video Files?

Popular Video File Extensions

File Database Breakdown - Video File Extensions

Top Video File Extensions