Supported Media Formats in Media Foundation

This topic lists the media formats that Microsoft Media Foundation supports natively. Third parties can support additional formats by writing custom plug-ins.

File Containers

Format File Extensions Media Source Media Sink Requires
3GP .3g2, .3gp, .3gp2, .3gpp MPEG-4 File Source 3GP File Sink Windows 7
Advanced Streaming Format (ASF) .asf, .wma, .wmv ASF Media Source ASF Media Sink Windows Vista
Audio Data Transport Stream (ADTS). .aac, .adts ADTS File Source None Windows 7
AVI .avi AVI File Source None Windows 7
MP3 .mp3 MP3 File Source MP3 File Sink File source: Windows Vista
File sink: Windows 7
MPEG-4 .m4a, .m4v, .mov, .mp4 MPEG-4 File Source MPEG-4 File Sink Windows 7
Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange (SAMI) .sami, .smi SAMI Media Source None Windows Vista
WAVE .wav AVI File Source None Windows 7

 

Audio Codecs

Format Decoder Encoder Requires
μ-law Coding Audio Compression Manager (ACM) μ-law Codec None Windows Vista
Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation (ADPCM) ACM ADPCM Codec None Windows Vista
Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) AAC Decoder AAC Encoder Windows 7
MP3 Windows Media MP3 Decoder None Windows Vista
GSM 6.10 ACM GSM 6.10 Codec None Windows Vista
Windows Media Audio (WMA) Windows Media Audio Decoder
Windows Media Audio Voice Decoder
Windows Media Audio Encoder
Windows Media Audio Voice Encoder
Windows Vista

 

Note

Media Foundation provides wrappers for several ACM codecs, listed in the previous table. However, Media Foundation does not support arbitrary ACM codecs.

 

Video Codecs

Format Decoder Encoder Requires
DV Video DV Video Decoder None Windows 7
H.264 H.264 Video Decoder H.264 Video Encoder Windows 7
H.263
(H.264 baseline profile which is compatible to MPEG-4 Pt2 short video header mode)
MPEG-4 Part 2 Video Decoder None Windows 8
MJPEG MJPEG Decoder None Windows 7
MPEG-4 Part 2 MPEG-4 Part 2 Video Decoder None Windows 7
MPEG-4 v1/v2/v3 Windows Media MPEG-4 V3 Decoder
Windows Media MPEG4 V1/V2 Decoder
None Windows Vista
Windows Media Video (WMV) Windows Media Video 9 Decoder
Windows Media Video 9 Screen Decoder
Windows Media Video 9 Encoder
Windows Media Video 9 Screen Encoder
Windows Media Video 7/8 Encoder
Windows Vista

 

Note

The "Requires" column lists the minimum operating system needed to uses these codecs within a Media Foundation application. Some of these codecs were introduced prior to Windows Vista as DirectX Media Objects (DMOs). If a codec supports DMO functionality, it can be used with DirectShow or the Windows Media Format SDK.

 

Codec Objects

Media Foundation Programming Guide

Media Sources and Sinks