Perhaps many people will think that MPEG4 is MP4, and they are totally the same thing, but that’s a so wrong idea. However, it’s not strange that people will mix them up, because they just differ by a letter, also because sometimes they can displace each other.

Nowadays, the video formats and audio formats are very complicated, because there are so many, almost every company wants to create a unique format for their products, like Apple, Apple release MOV and M4V respectively for QuickTime and iTunes. One format can be supported by one product but it can’t be supported by another, that’s very ordinary, and that’s why there are so many video converter reviews in the Internet. But before converting one format to another, you must know them very clearly, like these two MPEG4 and MP4, the first condition, what’s the difference between them?

To be simple, MPEG4 has a bigger definition than MP4, which means MP4 is part of it. According to their features, MPEG4 is a video encoding algorithm that is actually responsible for how the images are compressed and converted into data. In comparison, an MP4 is just a media container that was developed to hold the data that is encoded by an MPEG4, now it’s pretty clear, Right? You can understand that MP4 is a turnoff, and MPEG4 is a tool, MP4 has nothing to do with the video, it’s just the format that the video presents, no matter the quality of the video is good or bad, the key is MPEG4, not MP4. But they can convert to each other with converters. Speaking of converters or rippers, I gotta say the converters right now are so powerful, they can not just convert MPEG4 to MP4 something like the conversion between simple video formats, they also can convert DVD or blu-ray to the formats that can be supported by all kinds of portable devices, like dvd ripper for mac, it can rip DVD to MP4 perfectly. So now you know the things between MPEG4 and MP4 are much easier to understand, at least they have something in common.



MP4 is really a small part of MPEG4. An MPEG4 encoded video stored in an MP4 file could have been encoded by any of the various codecs; DivX, Xvid, Quicktime, and x264 just to name a few. In order to play that MP4 file, you need to have the right codecs installed on your computer. But MP4 is more popular than MPEG4, why? Because it can be supported by most portable devices, especially the remarkable Apple devices, iPod touch, iPhone and iPad, more and more people would like to convert all kinds of videos to MP4 so that they can be played on those devices, for example, with a dvd shrink mac, you can rip those DVD movies to MP4 and watch them on the iDevcies, maybe that is the biggest advantage of MP4, of course, the video resolution of MP4 is good too.

So in a word, MP4 is just a media container and a small part of MPEG4 but is more popular.