Container

Containers are Files that can contain audio and/or video. The audio and video is encoded (compressed) using codecs, and then stored in a container. Codecs can normally be used in a variety of different containers.

You can usually tell what container format is used for a file by looking at the file's extension. For example, if a file has a .mp4 extension, it is likely to contain MPEG-4 video.

See also Category:Container.

Below are listed the formats you can play with vlc (if I've missed any, feel free to add it :-)

File Extension	Contains
	A52
.aac	AAC
.aiff	AIFF
.amr	AMR
	Annodex
.asf	ASF
.au	AU
.avi	AVI
.dts	DTS
.dump	Demuxdump
.flac	FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)
.nsf, .nsfe, .gbs, .vgm, .vgz, .spc, .gym	gme
.mkv, .mka, .mks	Matroska
	MediaBase
.mpc	Musepack
.m2ts, .mpg, .mpeg, .vob	MPEG-TS or MPEG-PS
.mov	MOV
.flv	flash Video
.m4a, .m4b, .m4p	MPEG-4 Audio
.mp4	MPEG-4
.nsv	NSV
.ogm	OGM
.ogg	Ogg
.pva	PVA
.rm, .ram, .ra	RealMedia
	SDP (streaming only)
.wav	WAV
.wmv	Windows Media Video