if you could pick a standard format for a purpose what would it be and why?
e.g. flac for lossless audio because…
(yes you can add new categories)
summary:
- photos .jxl
- open domain image data .exr
- videos .av1
- lossless audio .flac
- lossy audio .opus
- subtitles srt/ass
- fonts .otf
- container mkv (doesnt contain .jxl)
- plain text utf-8 (many also say markup but disagree on the implementation)
- documents .odt
- archive files (this one is causing a bloodbath so i picked randomly) .tar.zst
- configuration files toml
- typesetting typst
- interchange format .ora
- models .gltf / .glb
- daw session files .dawproject
- otdr measurement results .xml
For videos, I bet it was .mkv they mentioned. mkv can have different codecs and different tracks, including audio and subtitles. I see it used often for tv and movies. I’m not sure if there’s disadvantages to it for general videos, like ones shot right from a camera.
I’ve been happy with .7z or .tar.* for file archiving and compression, but I don’t know the pros or cons of each. I think there’s room for different methods of compression though, so a standard format should be able to use multiple.
For font families, .otf seems good for realtime text rendering. Seems any newer standards are mostly targeted at graphic design.
Afaik the disadvantage to mkv is that it supports everything. That makes fully supporting and testing every case rather difficult and it’s why webm, a subset of mkv, was created.
.mka is a real file format, it’s the Matroska audio container. Not very common, but I see them occasionally.
Mkv is listed as container How is av1 better than HEVC? (I don’t know av1, only avi for crap quality movie files)
Edit: about 30% better and open ( source: https://www.howtogeek.com/778804/what-is-the-av1-codec/ (just disable JavaScript / use a reader to break through the paywall))