Video File Format Specification
Version 10
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Published November 2008
Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The FLV file format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The F4V file format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
What’s new in Video File Format 10. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Speex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
XMP Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Chapter 1: The FLV File Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
The FLV header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
The FLV file body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
FLV tags. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Audio tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
AUDIODATA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
AACAUDIODATA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Video tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
VIDEODATA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
AVCVIDEOPACKET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Data tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
onMetaData. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Chapter 2: The F4V File Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
The F4V box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
ftyp box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
moov box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
mvhd box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
trak box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
udta box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
meta box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
mdia box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
minf box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
stbl box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
tkhd box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
mdhd box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
stsd box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
i
stsc box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
stts box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
ctts box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
stco and co64 boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
stss box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
stsz box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
chpl box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
pdin box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
mdat box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Required structure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Supported media types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Unsupported boxes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Chapter 3: F4V Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
Tag box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
ilst box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Image metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Text metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
styl box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
hlit box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
hclr box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
krok box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
dlay box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
drpo box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
drpt box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
href box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
tbox box. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
blnk box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
twrp box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
XMP Metadata . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
uuid box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
ii
Contents
Introduction
This document provides technical format information for the video file formats supported by
Adobe® Flash® Player software—FLV and F4V.
Adobe seriously considers all feedback to the video file format specification. E-mail any
unclear or potentially erroneous information within the specification to Adobe at
flashformat@adobe.com. All such email submissions shall be subject to the Submitted
Materials guidelines in the Terms of Use at www.adobe.com/misc/copyright.html.
The FLV file format
Starting with SWF files published for Flash Player 6, Flash Player can exchange audio, video,
and data over RTMP connections with the Adobe Flash Media Server™. One way to feed data
to Flash Media Server (and thus on to Flash Player clients) is from files in the FLV file format.
Starting with SWF files published for Flash Player 7, Flash Player can also play FLV files
directly with MIME type video/x-flv.
An FLV file encodes synchronized audio and video streams. The audio and video data within
FLV files are encoded in the same way as audio and video within SWF files.
This document describes FLV version 1. For more information on the FLV format, see
Chapter 1, “The FLV File Format,” on page 3.
The F4V file format
Starting with SWF files published for Flash Player 9 Update 3 (9,0,115,0), Flash Player can
play F4V files. The F4V format is based on the format specified by ISO/IEC 14496-12: ISO
base media file format. For more information on the F4V format, see Chapter 2, “The F4V
File Format,” on page 17.
A large part of the F4V format involves metadata. For more information on F4V metadata,
see Chapter 3, “F4V Metadata,” on page 35.
1
What’s new in Video File Format 10
The following features are new in the Flash video file format specifications (both FLV and
F4V) corresponding to Flash Player 10.
Speex
Flash Player 10 supports the open source Speex audio codec. Speex data can serve as the audio
stream in an FLV file. See “AUDIODATA” on page 6.
XMP Metadata
The F4V file format supports a box type called 'uuid' which can store data formatted in
Adobe’s Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP™) and present it to a SWF file via ActionScript®.
See “XMP Metadata” on page 43.
2
Introduction
CHAPTER 1
The FLV File Format
1
Each tag type in an FLV file constitutes a single stream. There can be no more than one audio
and one video stream, synchronized together, in an FLV file. An FLV file cannot define
multiple independent streams of a single type.
Unlike SWF files, FLV files store multibyte integers in big-endian byte order. For example, as
a UI16 in SWF file format, the byte sequence that represents the number 300 (0x12C) is
0x2C 0x01; as a UI16 in FLV file format, the byte sequence that represents the number 300 is
0x01 0x2C. Also, FLV files use a 3-byte integer type that is not used in SWF files: a UI24
represents an unsigned 24-bit integer.
3
The FLV header
All FLV files begin with the following header:
FLV header
Field
Signature
Signature
Signature
Version
TypeFlagsReserved
TypeFlagsAudio
TypeFlagsReserved
TypeFlagsVideo
DataOffset
Type
UI8
UI8
UI8
UI8
UB[5]
UB[1]
UB[1]
UB[1]
UI32
Comment
Signature byte always 'F' (0x46)
Signature byte always 'L' (0x4C)
Signature byte always 'V' (0x56)
File version (for example, 0x01 for FLV
version 1)
Must be 0
Audio tags are present
Must be 0
Video tags are present
Offset in bytes from start of file to start
of body (that is, size of header)
The DataOffset field usually has a value of 9 for FLV version 1. This field is present to
accommodate larger headers in future versions.
The FLV file body
After the FLV header, the remainder of an FLV file consists of alternating back-pointers and
tags. They interleave as shown in the following table:
FLV file body
Field
PreviousTagSize0
Tag1
PreviousTagSize1
Type
UI32
FLVTAG
UI32
Comment
Always 0
First tag
Size of previous tag, including its
header. For FLV version 1, this value
is 11 plus the DataSize of the previous
tag.
Tag2
...
FLVTAG
Second tag
4
The FLV File Format