MPEG-4

MPEG-4 is a form of MPEG encoding. It is a flexible audio and video compression format. The format describes audio and video compression, with a container format for streaming across networks and saving to disk. It also contains optional extra features, including DRM and subtitles. These extra features are only included in software if needed. MPEG-4 can provide better quality than MPEG-2 at low bitrates.

Here is an example of how to transcode an AVI into an MPEG-4 video from the command prompt

% vlc file.avi --sout='#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga}:std{access=file,mux=mp4,dst=file.m4v}' 

Codecs

• Video codec: mp4v (m4v)
• Audio codec: mp4a (m4a) - this is AAC.

Container

mp4	VLC can encode and decode this container. The module name to use at the command line is mp4, but you can also use mov, or 3gp.

Accepted video codecs

• mp4v
• mpgv
• MJPG
• mjpb
• SVQ1
• SVQ3
• H263
• h264
• samr
• sawb

Accepted audio codecs

• mp4a
• mpga

Source code

• modules/mux/mp4.c