Tutorial : HTML MultimediaWhat is Multimedia?Multimedia comes in many different formats. It can be almost anything you can hear or see like text, pictures, music, sound, videos, records, films, animations, and more. On the Internet you can often find multimedia elements embedded in web pages, and modern web browsers have support for a number of multimedia formats.
In this tutorial you will learn about different multimedia formats and how to use them in your web pages.
Browser SupportThe first Internet browsers had support for text only, and even the text support was limited to a single font in a single color. Then came browsers with support for colors, fonts and text styles, and the support for pictures was added.
The support for sounds, animations and videos is handled in different ways by different browsers. Some elements can be handled inline, and some requires an extra helper program (a plug-in).
Multimedia File Formats : Multimedia elements (like sounds or videos) are stored in media files.
The most common way to discover the media type is to look at the file extension. When a browser sees the file extensions .htm or .html, it will assume that the file is an HTML page. The .xml extension indicates an XML file, and the .css extension indicates a style sheet. Picture formats are recognized by extensions like .gif and .jpg.
Multimedia elements also have their own file formats with different extensions like .swf, .wmv, .mp3, and .mp4.
Video File Formats : The MP4 format is the new and upcoming format for internet video. It is supported by YouTube, Flash players and HTML5.

Format File Description
AVI .avi The AVI (Audio Video Interleave) format was developed by Microsoft. The AVI format is supported by all
computers running Windows, and by all the most popular web browsers. It is a very common format on
the Internet, but not always possible to play on non-Windows computers.
WMV .wmv The Windows Media format is developed by Microsoft. Windows Media is a common format on the Internet, but
Windows Media movies cannot be played on non-Windows computer without an extra (free) component
installed.
Some later Windows Media movies cannot play at all on non-Windows computers because no player is
available.
MPEG .mpg .mpeg The MPEG (Moving Pictures Expert Group) format is the most popular format on the Internet. It is cross-
platform and supported by all the most popular web browsers.
QuickTime .mov The QuickTime format is developed by Apple. QuickTime is a common format on the Internet, but QuickTime
movies cannot be played on a Windows computer without an extra (free) component installed.
RealVideo .rm .ram The RealVideo format was developed for the Internet by Real Media. The format allows streaming of video
(on-line video, Internet TV) with low bandwidths. Because of the low bandwidth priority, quality is often
reduced.
Flash .swf .flv The Flash (Shockwave) format was developed by Macromedia. The Shockwave format requires an extra
component to play. But this component comes preinstalled with web browsers like Firefox and Internet
Explorer.
Mpeg-4 .mp4 Mpeg-4 (with H.264 video compression) is the new format for the internet. In fact, YouTube recommends using
MP4. YouTube accepts multiple formats, and then converts them all to .flv or .mp4 for distribution. More and
more online video publishers are moving to MP4 as the internet sharing format for both Flash players and
HTML5.