This is the most popular and most sought-after filetype. This is because following the age of VHS tapes they were the most often the files burned into the DVD's that were released by the master. VOB files can be extracted and burned onto a DVD. Some DVD players require that VOB files also include what are called small files. Small files, also known as “smalls” are often required the VOB files to play properly. Some traders won’t accept VOB files if small files are not also present. As a result, it is common to specify whether or not they include smalls.

• VOB files can be played using the VLC Player, which is a free open-source application. To play the VOBs properly, I recommend you put them in a folder together with the smalls, and click on the first .IFO file in the folder, most commonly the VIDEO_TS.IFO file. This usually leads to the DVD menu (which most masters put a lot of work into!)

• .BUP stands for BackUP. Therefore, if you're (for example) missing "VIDEO_TS.IFO", you can make a copy of "VIDEO_TS.BUP" and rename the extension to ".IFO", and vice versa. The files are identical. The same principle applies to "VTS_01_0.BUP" and "VTS_01_0.IFO". Unfortunately, you cannot replace missing VTS_01_0.VOB or VIDEO_TS.VOB files.

• Most newer traders consider this filetype as old-school and obsolete. Since the maximum resolution for DVD is 480p for NTSC videos, that is considerably true. However, some masters still opt to release in this format for several reasons:

  • There's a size limit. For one disc videos, it'll never be bigger than 4.4 GB. Since two disc videos have one act on each disc, the extracted VOB files will never bigger than 9 GB, which means you can get a general sense of how big a video should be.

  • Some people want to store their videos offline—since VOB files can be burned to discs, many people choose to utilize that feature instead of trusting online cloud services after the trading debacle of the MEGAUPLOAD crash.

Similarly, the ISO file type is an archive file that contains an identical copy (or image) of data found on an optical disc, like a DVD. They are often used for backing up optical discs, or for distributing large file sets that are intended to burned to an optical disc. Inside these archives, you can either find Blu-Ray M2TS files or the VOB + smalls files as detailed above. When in an ISO image, the file size and quality will remain the same—just zipped into one singular file.

A controversial filetype indeed. If encoded correctly, this filetype will be of high quality. Most of the time, newer video releases in MP4 will be higher quality than VOB files! However, not many people will trade for this filetype if there is a VOB version available instead. Why is that, you ask, if VOB files are way lower quality? That is many newer traders try and trade out smaller MP4 files are just downloads (ripped) from boots that have been uploaded to YouTube. When new traders make the mistake of downloading YouTube videos and putting them up for trade, they quickly earn a bad reputation because YouTube rips are consistently low quality. Some people try to get around this by converting MP4 files to VOB files. That the worst idea in the world. Traders can tell when a video was originally a YouTube rip. They will not accept a converted file. MP4 files, as a result, used to have a negative reputation amongst the community, which is a shame considering that it can be better than a VOB if correctly encoded. Since 2018, however, many new video masters have started releasing in high quality MP4 files, so this filetype's reputation is slowly becoming positive.

• As such, when dealing with MP4 files, there are some important things to consider.

  • If the video was originally released as a MP4 file, it's important to label the filetype with wording such as Original. This will help traders know when a video is actually available in a higher quality than the popular VOB counterpart.

  • If you suspect a MP4 file to be a YouTube rip, there are some things you can do.

    1. Analyze the size of the video. If the video is less than a gigabyte in size, it's incredibly unlikely that this was the original file that was released by the master. YouTube downloaders nowadays are able to rip videos with large sizes, so this step can often be difficult.

    2. Alternatively, open the file in VLC media player, press CTRL + I to pull up the Media Information, locate the Metadata tab and open it. If the words YouTube are seen in the box, you have your answer.

  • Most masters will also state the file size and type in their releases, so try and locate those if you're able to. Use common sense as well—there's not going to be any MP4 files from the early 2000's. Some masters have never released in MP4 as well, so keep that in mind.

A MOV file is a common multimedia container file format developed by Apple and compatible with both Macintosh and Windows platforms. It may contain multiple tracks that store different types of media data and is often used for saving movies and other video files. MOV files commonly use the MPEG-4 codec for compression. MOV files may contain video, audio, timecode, and text tracks, which can be used to store and synchronize different types of media. Most of the time, a MOV file will have been recorded by a Apple device running the iOS system. As such, the MOV filetype is often associated with phone boot culture—meaning that they may be less quality or even insubordinate to the VOB or MP4 filetype. In some cases, however, the MOV file may also be created for certain camcorder models such as some cameras from Sony or from some 'spy camera' devices. As such, it is important to consider the file size and to note the presence of quality zooms in the video before labelling a video a phone boot.

M2TS is a filename extension used for the Blu-ray Disc Audio-Video MPEG-2 Transport Stream container file format. It is used for multiplexing audio, video and other streams. It is based on the MPEG-2 transport stream container. This container format is commonly used for high definition video on Blu-ray Disc and AVCHD. The M2TS files on a Blu-ray Disc are placed in the subdirectory "STREAM" of the "BDMV" (or "BDAV") directory, which is at the root level. (for example: \BDMV\STREAM\00001.m2ts or \BDAV\STREAM\00001.m2ts). On some AVCHD equipment, the "BDMV" directory is located in the "AVCHD" directory, which is placed at the root level (such as: \AVCHD\BDMV\STREAM\00001.MTS)

The MTS / M2TS file format is generally in full 1920x1080p HD and the original file format of a video on some camera equipment, but it is often very large. In addition, the MTS / M2TS format is incompatible with services such as YouTube so some masters will opt to convert to MP4, VOB + smalls, etc. to increase compatibility.

Audio Video Interleave, known by its initials AVI and the .avi filename extension is a multimedia container format introduced by Microsoft in November 1992 as part of its Video for Windows software. AVI files can contain both audio and video data in a file container that allows synchronous audio-with-video playback. Simply put, AVI files are rarely associated with the normal standards of modern trading culture because AVI is no longer used in any mainstream video camera brands anymore—most of the time, AVI videos will come from 'spy' cameras or older circa-2010 videos.

The WMV file extension is a video file based on the Microsoft Advanced Systems Format (ASF) container format and compressed with Windows Media compression. It is the same as to an . ASF file and has video encoded with one of Microsoft's Windows Media Video (WMV) proprietary codec. Using the WMV format has several advantages over other formats; for example, it can contain a large amount of audio and video information in a small amount of storage space. However, because of the WMV's proprietary codec, it's not as widely supported as other formats. This is one of the least likely formats to come across in the trading community since no camera actively films in WMV—it'll only exist in WMV if the master converted to it to save space.

A common, but lossy filetype. It's been around for years, and since its birth far better ones have evolved. It's still good though, and there will usually be no audible difference between this filetype and others when listened to with the inexpensive headphones/speakers most people own. MP3 files can range from 30 MB to even several GB's in size, so there's a sizeable range in quality that's possible with this filetype.

A filetype used by Apple devices. In general, it tends to be smaller in size than MP3 files while sounding better at that size. It's sort of like Apple's evolved version of the MP3. I've covered this format in the Audio recording Guide page, but the size can range from several dozen MB to over a GB in size based on either the recording application (Voice Memo, Voice Record Pro, etc.) and the settings used (such as Compressed or Lossless).

It used to be a really great sign if an older audio was recording in WAV as it was a sign that the master was well versed in the recording process that leads to a good audio, but the the technology is so widespread now that anyone can record in WAV. WAV is a lossless but usually a very large size, so some masters will edit their WAV files down to lossy filetypes like MP3 to conserve space but preserve the sound quality. FLAC audio files are much rarer and almost never commonly circulated bootleg recordings but rather more common amongst music album collectors.

This is one of the rarer audio file types, so don't worry about it too much unless you're all about binaural stereo recording at extremely high quality—which is expensive and not for everyone. Technical-wise, this is an format developed by Apple Inc. in 1988 and is most commonly used on Apple Macintosh computer systems. In cases in which this file format shows up, it's because this is one of the only audio formats that's natively supported by the audio-tracking program Audacity (of course, you can install ffmpeg to increase compatibility).

WMA can preserve slightly better fidelity in low bitrates (a measure of audio quality) and high frequencies. WMA is proprietary to Microsoft, which can lead to restrictions down the line, which is why this file format is not as popular as others.