In researching potential video formats for switching my DVD library from VIDEO_TS to something else (due to file access time issues) I found I had real trouble locating the list of audio and video formats that Windows 7 supports out of the box. The provided "supported formats" page really isn't technical enough.
While I haven't determined which video format to move my library to, I did get a response to my question about this on the forums. Here's the info from there, for your convenience:
| Format Name | File Extensions | Container | Video Decoders | Audio Decoders |
| MPEG-4 | .mp4 (A, V, A+V)
.m4a (A)
.mov | ISO MPEG-4, AVI | H.264, MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP) and Simple Profile (SP) | AAC, MP3 |
| 3GPP/3GPP2 | .3gp, .3g2
(A, V, A+V) | 3GP | H.264, MPEG-4 Simple Profile (SP) | AAC |
| AAC | .aac (A) | ADTS | | AAC |
| ASP in AVI (Compatible with DivX 4-6 video, Xvid and 3ivx) | .avi (V, A+V) | AVI | MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP) | MP3, MS ADPCM |
| AVCHD | .m2t, m2ts, .mts (A, V, A+V) | MPEG-2 Transport Stream (TS) | H.264 | Dolby Digital, LPCM |
| HDV | .m2t, m2ts, .mts (A, V, A+V) | MPEG-2 Transport Stream (TS) | MPEG-2 | MPEG-1 L2 (Layer 2) |
Or, split/arranged a different way:
| Category | Supported Types |
| Video Decoders | - H.264/AVC Baseline, Main and High Profiles (new in Windows 7)
- MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile (new in Windows 7) besides Simple Profile
- Subset of H.263 that overlaps with MPEG-4 SP
- Motion JPEG (new in Windows 7)
- WMV variants including VC1 and WMV Screen
- MPEG-1 and -2
- DV
|
| Audio Decoders | - AAC, HE-AAC, HE-AAC v2 (new in Windows 7)
- Dolby Digital Plus (new in Windows 7) besides Dolby Digital/AC-3
- WMA family of music decoders and speech decoders
- MP3
- MPEG-1 and -2
|
| Image Decoders | - HD Photo (JPEG-XR)
- JPEG
- PNG
- BMP
- TIFF
- GIF
- ICO (Icon Format)
|
| Containers | - MP4 and its close cousins MOV, 3GP, M4A (new in Windows 7)
- Media Center's WTV (new in Win7 and Media Center TV Pack) and DVR-MS
- MPEG-2 Transport Streams and its cousin AVCHD
- MPEG-1 and -2 Program Streams
- AVI, WAV
- ASF
- DVD
- ADTS
|