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.
.mka is a real file format, it’s the Matroska audio container. Not very common, but I see them occasionally.
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.
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))