List of file formats

This is a list of file formats often seen on computers. Filename extensions are usually noted in parenthesis if they differ from the format name or abbreviation.

• Audio file formats
  • Lossless
    • Uncompressed
      • AIFF
      • au file format
      • CDDA
      • IFF-8SVX
      • IFF-16SV
      • RAW (raw samples without any header or sync)
      • WAV
    • Compressed
      • FLAC (free as in freedom lossless codec of the Ogg project)
  • Lossy
    • MP2
    • MP3
    • Speex (Ogg project, specialized for voice, low bitrates)
    • Vorbis (Ogg project, free and similar in principle to MP3)
    • Windows Media Audio (WMA)
    • MPC
  • Music formats
    • MID (standard MIDI file; most often just notes and controls but occasionally also sample dumps)
    • NSF (bytecode program to play NES music)
    • MOD (Soundtracker and Protracker sample and melody modules)
    • S3M (ScreamTracker 3 module, with a few more effects and a dedicated volume column)
    • XM (FastTracker module, adding instrument envelopes)
    • IT (Impulse Tracker module, adding compressed samples, note-release actions, and more effects including a resonant filter)
    • MT2 (MadTracker 2 module. It could be resumed as being XM and IT combined with more features like track effects and automation.)

• Document file formats - These are ways of storing mainly text
  • ASCII (.txt)
  • Amigaguide
  • HTML (.html, .htm)
  • Radix-64
  • RTF (a textual encoding of the data in a Word DOC; many programs' Word export filters actually write RTF as RTF is much easier to generate reliably)
  • TeX
  • Troff
  • Word (.doc) (Format revised and altered very often; little official documentation)
  • XML

• Raster image or graphics file formats
  • BMP
  • GIF (often avoided because of patent problems)
  • MSP (file format used by old versions of Microsoft paint, replaced with bmp in Windows 3.0)
  • IFF-ILBM (.ilbm .lbm .iff)
  • JNG (single-frame MNG with JPEG data and possibly an alpha channel)
  • JPEG JFIF (.jpg or .jpeg) (lossy, recommended for display of photographic images)
  • PCX
  • PNG (lossless, recommended for display and edition of graphic images)
  • PPM
  • PSD
  • TGA
  • TIFF (.tif or .tiff) (usually lossless, many variant exist including lossy one)

• Vector image formats
  • CGM Computer Graphics Metafile an ISO Standard
  • CMX
  • DXF
  • SVG
  • Scene description languages (3D vector image formats)
    • MOVIE.BYU
    • RenderMan
    • VRML
    • X3D

• Object code file formats
  • a.out (Unix and GCC only, not technically a file format)
  • ELF
  • MZ EXE (.exe; used in MS-DOS)
  • PE (.exe; used in Microsoft Windows and some other systems)

• Page description languages
  • DVI
  • PCL
  • PDF
  • PostScript (.ps, .ps.gz)

• Hypertext description
  • HTML and XHTML
  • CSS

• Data exchange
  • XML
  • SDXF (Structured Data Exchange Format)

• Tabulated data
  • tab
  • csv (comma separated values)
  • dif (accessible by many spreadsheet applications)

• Archiving and compression formats
  • arj
  • bzip2 (.bz2)
  • deb
  • gzip (.gz)
  • LHA (.lzh)
  • lzo
  • lzx
  • zip
  • rar
  • tar
  • .tar.gz (gzipped tar file)
  • zoo
  • 7z

• Video file formats
  • AAF (mostly intended to hold edit decisions and rendering information, but can also contain compressed media essence)
  • Animated GIF (simple animation; often avoided because of patent problems)
  • ASF (ASF is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-4 is common. Video in ASF-containers is also called Windows Media Video (WMV))
  • AVI (AVI is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-1 and a variant of MPEG-4 are common)
  • Macromedia Flash (.swf) (complex vector-based animation with sound and interactivity)
  • Matroska (*.mkv) (Matroska is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-4 is common)
  • MNG (mainly simple animation containing PNG and JPEG objects, often somewhat more complex than animated GIF)
  • MPEG
  • MXF
  • Tarkin (Ogg project, all Tarkin files are Ogg files)
  • Theora (Ogg project, all Theora files are Ogg files)
  • Ogg (Ogg is a shell, which enables any compliant form of compression to be used; Theora is common)
  • OGM (OGM is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-4 is common)
  • QuickTime (QuickTime is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; Sorenson codec is common)
  • RealMedia

• GIS file formats
  • DEM (USGS) (US Geo Survey terrestrial elevation data)

• Disk images (a file system used as a random-access archive file inside another file system)
  • .img
  • .iso
  • .dmg (Mac OS X)
  • .smi (Mac OS)

• Native data (registered objective parametrs .dat .cop .par)