File Formats?

In today’s digital world, we see exponential rise in creation, usage of data. This data needs to be stored in some kind of file. Based on usage of data, type of data, structure of data various file formats are used. File formats are specific ways of organizing and encoding information in a computer file. And to process the data available in file it’s very important to understand the type of file, structure of file and many other properties of file to process it efficiently.

Below we will see different types of file formats which are available across different industry or usage.

Common File Formats

Text File (.txt)	Simple files with plain text, like a basic note.
CSV (Comma separated file values)	Used for tables or lists where data is separated by commas
XLS	Used for tables where data is organized in rows and columns
Word document (.docs)	Used for word processing
PDF (Portable Document Format)	Preserves document layout and design, commonly used for sharing

Big Data File Formats

Parquet	A columnar storage file format optimized for use with Apache Spark. It is designed to provide efficient storage and performance for analytics queries.
Avro	A binary serialization format developed within the Apache Hadoop project. Avro is compact, fast, and suitable for serializing large amounts of data.
ORC	Optimized Row Columnar storage file format designed for use with Apache Hive but is now widely used across the Hadoop ecosystem. It offers excellent compression and performance for analytics.
JSON	JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) file is commonly used for semi-structured data
XML	Extensible Markup language, similar to JSON it is used for semi-structured data. It is human readable

Audio File Format

MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer III)	Widely used for compressed audio files, offering a good balance between file size and sound quality
WAV (Waveform Audio)	An uncompressed audio file format that maintains high audio quality but results in larger file sizes.
FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)	A lossless compression format that preserves the original audio quality while reducing file size
AAC (Advanced Audio Coding)	Commonly used for compressed audio files, often found in iTunes and other Apple devices.
OGG (Ogg Vorbis)	An open-source, royalty-free audio compression format that provides good sound quality

Video File Format

MP4 (MPEG -4)	A widely used video container format that can store audio, video, and subtitles
AVI (Audio Video Interleave)	A multimedia container format developed by Microsoft, supporting both audio and video
MKV (Matroska Video)	An open standard multimedia container format that can include video, audio, and subtitles
WMV (Windows Media Window)	Developed by Microsoft, this video compression format is commonly used for streaming and online video.
MOV (Quick Time File Format)	Developed by Apple, commonly used for storing video and audio files

Image File Format

JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)	Commonly used for compressed images, suitable for photographs and graphics.
PNG (Portable Network Graphics)	Lossless image format supporting transparency, widely used for web graphics
GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)	Supports animations and is commonly used for simple graphics.
BMP (Bitmap)	An uncompressed image file format used on Windows systems.
TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)	A flexible format that supports lossless compression and is often used in professional photography and publishing

Compression Formats

ZIP (Archive Format)	Widely used for compressing files, ZIP reduces file size for efficient storage and faster transfers.
RAR (Roshal Archive)	Known for higher compression ratios, RAR is popular in file archiving and distribution.

The file format changes as the need of data to use, to store, to transfer changes and its very important to know the file type.