What are MP4 Files – and What Do They Do?
MP4 is short for ‘MPEG-4’. The official file extension for MPEG-4 is .mp4 – hence the shortened name MP4. MPEG-4 technology has been developed to provide DVD quality audio and pictures in an extremely small file size – ideal for playing on portable MP4 players such as the iPod Video. MP4 is here to stay. The Apple Corporation themselves describes MP4 as “the global multimedia standard, delivering professional-quality audio and video streams over a wide range of bandwidths, from cell phone to broadband and beyond”. Thy go on to say that “hundreds of researchers around the world contributed to MPEG-4, which was finalized in 1998 and became an international standard in 2000”. The BBC confirms that MPEG-4 is used to compress video and is the successor to MPEG-2. They also explain that the version that can turn massive movie files into a handier size has escaped on to the Internet thanks to Microsoft. Microsoft developed the software to compress and decompress video, which is called a calle
