List of file formats
This is a list of file formats organized by type, seen on computers. Filename extensions are usually noted in parenthesis if they differ from the format name or abbreviation.
Sound & music
Lossless audio
- Uncompressed
- Compressed
Lossy audio
- MP2 (MPEG Layer 2)
- MP3 (MPEG Layer 3)
- Speex (Ogg project, specialized for voice, low bitrates)
- Vorbis (Ogg project, free and similar in principle to MP3)
- GSM (GSM Full Rate, originally developed for use in mobile phones)
- Windows Media Audio (.WMA)
- AAC (.m4a, .mp4, .m4p, .aac) – Advanced Audio Coding (usually in an MPEG4 container)
- MPC – Musepack
- VQF – Yamaha TwinVQ
- Real Audio (RA, RM)
- SWA – Macromedia_Shockwave Audio (Same compression as MP3 with additional header information specific to Macromedia Director – see What is the difference between MP3 and SWA files?)
Other music formats
- MID (standard MIDI file; most often just notes and controls but occasionally also sample dumps)
- NSF (bytecode program to play NES music)
- MOD (Soundtracker and Protracker sample and melody modules)
- S3M (ScreamTracker 3 module, with a few more effects and a dedicated volume column)
- XM (FastTracker module, adding instrument envelopes)
- IT (Impulse Tracker module, adding compressed samples, note-release actions, and more effects including a resonant filter)
- MT2 (MadTracker 2 module. It could be resumed as being XM and IT combined with more features like track effects and automation.)
- MNG (BGM for the Creatures game series, starting from Creatures 2; a free editor and player is available)
- STF StudioFactory project file. It contains all necessary patches, samples, tracks and settings to play the file.
- SYN SynFactory project file. It contains all necessary patches, samples, tracks and settings to play the file.
- NIFF
- MusicXML
Computer Aided Design
- DXF, or ASCII Drawing Interchange file format
- GERBER, or Gerber file
- EXCELLON, or Excellon file
- IGES
- Intergraph's Intergraph Standard File Formats
- Softimage's dotXSI
Electronic Design Automation
- GDSII
- OASIS, Open Artwork System Interchange Standard
- OpenAccess
- SPICE netlist format (see SPICE, netlist)
- LEF/DEF
Document
These files store formatted text.
- ASCII, Unicode (.txt, .utx (for Unicode))
- Amigaguide
- AWW – Ability Write
- HTML (.html, .htm) and XHTML (.xhtml, .xht, .xml)
- LWP – Lotus Word Pro
- Radix-64
- RTF – Rich Text Format
- SXW – StarOffice/OpenOffice.org Word Processor format
- TeX (.tex)
- Texinfo (.info)
- Troff
- DOC – Microsoft Word
- OpenOffice (employs XML) (http://xml.openoffice.org )
- WPD – WordPerfect
- WPS – Microsoft Works
- WRF – ThinkFree Write
- WRI – Microsoft Write
Spreadsheet
- 123 – Lotus 1–2–3
- AWS – Ability Spreadsheet
- CLF – ThinkFree Calc
- CSV – Comma Separated Values
- gnumeric – Linux gnumeric spreadsheet, gziped XML file
- Quattro
- SXC – StarOffice/OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet
- TAB – tab delimited columns; also TSV (tab separated values)
- XLS – Microsoft Excel worksheets
- WK? – Lotus 1–2–3
- WKS – Microsoft Works
Database
- DBF – DBase III/IV
- MDB – Microsoft Database (Access)
- NSF – Lotus Notes database
- NTF – Lotus Notes database design template
- SQL – bundled SQL queries
- WDB – Microsoft Works Database
- FP? – Filemaker
Presentation
- PPS – Microsoft PowerPoint Show
- PPT – Microsoft PowerPoint
- PRZ – Lotus Freelance Graphics
- SHF – ThinkFree Show
Webpage
- Static
- Dynamically generated
- ASP (.asp) – Microsoft Active Server Page
- ASPX (.aspx) – Microsoft Active Server Page.NET
- ADP – AOLserver Dynamic Page
- CFM (.cfm) – ColdFusion
- CGI (.cgi)
- Perl (.pl)
- PHP (.php, .php?, .phtml) - ? is version number
- SSI (.shtml) – HTML with Server Side Includes
Script
- HTML Applications (.hta)
- ICI (.ici)
- JavaScript (.js)
- PHP (.php, .php?) - ? is version number
- Perl (.pl)
- Python (.py)
- Ruby (.rb)
- Shell script (.sh)
- Tcl (.tcl)
- Visual Basic Script (.vbs)
Graphics
- Main article: graphics file formats.
Raster graphics
These files store images as a group of pixels.
- ART – America Online proprietary format.
- BMP
- CUT – Dr. Halo image file
- DjVu – DjVu for scanned documents
- GIF – CompuServe's Graphics Interchange Format
- MNG – Multiple Network Graphics, the animated version of PNG.
- MSP – a file format used by old versions of Microsoft Paint. Replaced with BMP in Microsoft Windows 3.0.
- IFF (.iff, .ilbm, .lbm) – ILBM
- JNG – a single-frame MNG using JPEG compression and possibly an alpha channel.
- JPEG, JFIF (.jpg or .jpeg) – a lossy image format widely used to display photographic images.
- JP2 – JPEG2000
- LBM – Deluxe Paint image file
- MAX – ScanSoft PaperPort document
- MIFF – ImageMagick's native file format
- PBM – Portable BitMap
- PCX – an lossless format used by ZSoft's PC Paint, popular at one time on DOS systems.
- PGM – Portable Graymap
- PICT – Apple Macintosh PICT image
- PNG – Portable Network Graphic (lossless, recommended for display and edition of graphic images)
- PPM – Portable Pixmap
- PSD – Adobe Photoshop Drawing
- PSP – Jasc Paint Shop Pro image
- QFX – QuickLink Fax image
- RLE – a run-length encoded image.
- SGI – Silicon Graphics image
- TGA – Truevision Targa image file
- TIFF (.tif or .tiff) Tagged Image File Format (usually lossless, but many variants exist, including lossy ones.)
- XBM – X Window System Bitmap
- XPM – X Window System Pixmap
Vector graphics
Vector graphics use geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and polygons to represent images.
- AWG – Ability Draw
- AI – Adobe Illustrator Document
- CGM – Computer Graphics Metafile an ISO Standard
- CMX – Corel Draw vector image
- DXF – ASCII Drawing Interchange file format, used in AutoCAD
- SVG – Scalable Vector Graphics, employs XML
- Scene description languages (3D vector image formats)
Signal data formats (non-audio)
- ACQ – AcqKnowledge File Format for Windows/PC from Biopac
- BKR – The EEG data format developed at the University of Technology Graz
- BDF – BioSemo data format – similar to EDF but 24bit
- CFWB – Chart Data File Format from ADInstruments
- EDF – European data format
- FEF – File Exchange Format for Vital signs
- GDF – General data formats for biomedical signals
- MFER – Medical waveform Format Encoding Rules
- SCP-ECG – Standard Communication Protocol for Computer assisted electrocardiography
- SIGIF- SIGnal Interchange Format
- and many others [1]
Object code
- a.out classic UNIX object format, now often superseded by ELF
- COM files, used in DOS
- ELF
- MZ EXE (.exe; used in DOS)
- XPI (which is a PKZIP archive that can be run by Mozilla browsers to install software) (.xpi)
- Mach-O (Mach based systems, notably native format of Mac OS X)
- PE (.EXE, .DLL ; used in Microsoft Windows and some other systems)
- PEF (Mac OS versions 9 and under; compatible with Mac OS X via the Classic emulator)
- ZXE – Executable that is generated by the Z++ compiler.
Function Library
- DLL – Microsoft Dynamic Link Libraries
- .so – Shared object (Unix/Linux)
- .dylib – Macintosh Dynamic Library
- .tlb – Windows Type Library
Object Extensions
Page description language
- DVI
- PCL
- PostScript (.ps, .ps.gz)
Scientific data formats (Data Exchange)
- CDF Common data format [2]
- FITS Flexible Image Transport format – Standard data format for astronomy [3]
- NetCDF Network common data format [4]
- HDF Hirarchical Data Format [5]
- SDXF (Structured Data Exchange Format)
Tabulated data
- tab
- Comma-separated values (CSV)
- dif (accessible by many spreadsheet applications)
Archive and compressed
- 7z
- ace
- arj
- bzip2 (.bz2)
- cab – Microsoft Cabinet
- deb
- gzip (.gz)
- jar
- LHA (.lzh)
- lzo
- lzx
- Parchive (.par, .par2)
- RAR
- sit – Stuffit (Macintosh)
- tar
- .tar.gz (gzipped tar file)
- zoo
- zip
Video
- Main article: video file formats.
- AAF (mostly intended to hold edit decisions and rendering information, but can also contain compressed media essence)
- Animated GIF (simple animation; often avoided because of patent problems)
- ASF (ASF is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-4 is common. Video in ASF-containers is also called Windows Media Video (WMV))
- AVI (AVI is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-1 and a variant of MPEG-4 are common)
- Macromedia Flash (.swf for viewing, .fla for producing) (complex vector-based animation with sound and interactivity)
- Matroska (*.mkv) (Matroska is a container format, which enables any video format such as MPEG-4 or XviD to be used along with other content such as subtitles and detailed meta information)
- MNG (mainly simple animation containing PNG and JPEG objects, often somewhat more complex than animated GIF)
- MPEG
- MXF
- Tarkin (Ogg project, all Tarkin files are Ogg files)
- Theora (Ogg project, all Theora files are Ogg files)
- OGM (OGM is a container format created so that Ogg Vorbis could be used for the audio of a video as this could not be done with AVI)
- MOV (QuickTime, a container format, which enables any form of compression to be used; Sorenson codec is the most common)
- RealMedia
- XviD
Geographic Information System
- DEM (USGS) (US Geo Survey terrestrial elevation data)
- World TIFF (Geographically located raster data)
- GeoTIFF (Geographically located raster data)
External link
- Wotsit's format – A file format reference for programmers
- icdatamaster.com – A collection of file extensions and their descriptions (also has German and French versions)
- FILExt – another collection, with mime-types
- cryer.co.uk – another collection
- whatis?com – another collection
- [6] – list of scientific/signal data formats
Categories: Lists of file formats | Computer file formats | Filename extensions