About the Mov file format
- Name
- Apple QuickTime Movie
- Extension
- .mov
- Format
- Binary
- Category
- Video
- Developer
- Apple
- Description
- A MOV file is a common multimedia container file format developed by Apple and compatible with both Macintosh and Windows platforms. It may contain multiple tracks that store different types of media data and is often used for saving movies and other video files. MOV files commonly use the MPEG-4 codec for compression.
- MIME Type
- video/quicktime
- Sample
- sample.mov
- Wikipedia
- .mov on Wikipedia
An Apple QuickTime Movie file is stored in the QuickTime File Format (QTFF) multimedia container file. It was developed by Apple to be natively used by the QuickTime framework. It can have the .mov, .moov, .movie, or .qt file extensions. It contains either one or several tracks of audio, video, or text data or it can reference to where the data is stored in another file. Each track is in a hierarchical structure with objects known as atoms. It can also store animations and virtual reality.
One major benefit of the QuickTime Movie format is that it can be edited without re-writing all data after the edit. Also, you can interchange it with MP4 format especially in a QuickTime-only environment because they can use the same MPEG-4 format.
If you record a video in any Apple device like an iPhone or iPad, it will be saved with a .mov file extension. It’s the default video or audio file. The QuickTime Movie file with .mov extension can be opened on iTunes, QuickTime app, Windows Media Player, Google Drive, and VLC. Those with .movie or .qt extension can be opened with QuickTime. However, you can rename the file to .mov for ease in operability.
