A reference for how video is encoded, packaged, and delivered

Videolane collects short, practical explanations of the ideas that come up again and again when working with video: codecs, containers, bitrate, adaptive streaming, resolutions, and the terms attached to all of them. No marketing, no product comparisons, no accounts — just the concepts, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.

• H.264 vs H.265 How the two most common video codecs differ, and when the extra compression efficiency of H.265 is worth the trade-offs.
• Containers: MP4 vs MKV What a container actually stores, and why MP4 and MKV solve slightly different problems.
• Choosing a bitrate CBR, VBR, and CRF encoding explained, with practical bitrate ranges for common resolutions.
• Adaptive bitrate streaming How players switch between quality levels on the fly, and what a bitrate ladder is.
• Resolutions & frame rates SD through 8K, aspect ratios, and why frame rate choices matter as much as pixel count.
• Glossary Short definitions for the terms used throughout this reference, in one place.

Who this is for

This site is aimed at people who already touch video files in some way — preparing them for a website, organizing a personal archive, or just trying to understand why a file that "looks the same" plays back differently on two devices — and want a clear explanation rather than a sales pitch. Each page stands on its own, but they link to each other where the topics overlap, so you can follow a thread from a codec choice all the way through to how a player picks a rendition during playback.

About this reference

Videolane is maintained as a personal reference rather than a commercial product. There is nothing to sign up for, nothing to buy, and no tracking on these pages. Content is written and revised by the editorial team behind the site and updated occasionally as formats and common practice change.