Understanding Sony XAVC format

The folks over at Divergent Media put together this very informative overview of XAVC. The format is used across the board on Sony camcorders. From affordable pocket-friendly cameras, to the very popular Sony A7s and even their very expensive shoulder-mount cameras.

Divergent Media For the last few years, Sony has been shipping cameras with a new format, XAVC. XAVC encompasses a lot of different elements, and it’s created some confusion about what XAVC is, and what it isn’t. We’d like to help unravel the confusion, both from the official uses of XAVC, and some of the colloquial uses we’ve seen. The basics There are a few things that are constant about XAVC. XAVC is always going to involve some form of H.264 video, along with uncompressed LPCM audio. So, if you’ve got MPEG2 video or AC3 audio or any other permutation, it’s not XAVC. Wrappers A “wrapper” is the container that holds your audio and video. One wrapper most people are familiar with is the QuickTime .MOV format. An MOV file might contain many different types of video and audio, but the MOV part stays the same. Other wrappers include M2T, MXF, AVI, etc. read more...