List of file formats

This is a list of file formats often seen on computers.

Audio file formats
- Lossless
  - Uncompressed
    - AIFF
    - au file format
    - CDDA
    - IFF-8SVX
    - IFF-16SV
    - RAW (raw samples without any header or sync)
    - WAV
  - Compressed
    - FLAC (free as in freedom lossless codec of the Ogg project)
- Lossy
  - MP2
  - MP3
  - Speex (Ogg project, specialized for voice, low bitrates)
  - Vorbis (Ogg project, free and similar in principle to MP3)
  - WMA
  - MPC
- Music formats
  - MID (standard MIDI file; most often just notes and controls but occasionally also sample dumps)
  - NSF (bytecode program to play NES music)
  - MOD (Soundtracker and Protracker sample and melody modules)
  - S3M (ScreamTracker 3 module, with a few more effects and a dedicated volume column)
  - XM (FastTracker module, adding instrument envelopes)
  - IT (Impulse Tracker module, adding compressed samples, note-release actions, and more effects including a resonant filter)
Document file formats - These are ways of storing mainly text
- ASCII (.txt)
- Amigaguide
- HTML (.html, .htm)
- Radix-64
- RTF (a textual encoding of the data in a Word DOC; many programs' Word export filters actually write RTF as RTF is much easier to generate reliably)
- TeX
- Troff
- Word (.doc) (Format revised and altered very often; little official documentation)
- XML
Raster image or graphics file formats
- BMP
- GIF (often avoided because of patent problems)
- MSP (file format used by old versions of Microsoft paint, replaced with bmp in Windows 3.0)
- IFF-ILBM (.ilbm .lbm .iff)
- JNG (single-frame MNG with JPEG data and possibly an alpha channel)
- JPEG JFIF (.jpg or .jpeg) (lossy, recommended for display of photographic images)
- PCX
- PNG (lossless, recommended for display and edition of graphic images)
- PPM
- PSD
- TGA
- TIFF (.tif or .tiff) (usually lossless, many variant exist including lossy one)
Vector image formats
- CGM Computer Graphics Metafile an ISO Standard
- DXF
- SVG
- Scene description languages (3D vector image formats)
  - MOVIE.BYU
  - RenderMan
  - VRML
Object code file formats
- a.out (Unix and GCC only, not technically a file format)
- ELF
- MZ EXE (.exe; used in MS-DOS)
- PE (.exe; used in Microsoft Windows and some other systems)
Page description languages
- DVI
- PCL
- PDF
- PostScript (.ps, .ps.gz)
Hypertext description
- HTML
- CSS
Data exchange
- XML
- SDXF (Structured Data Exchange Format)
Tabulated data
- tab
- csv (comma separated values)
- dif (accessible by many spreadsheet applications)
Archiving and compression formats
- arj
- bzip2 (.bz2)
- gzip (.gz)
- LHA (.lzh)
- lzo
- lzx
- zip
- rar
- tar
- .tar.gz (gzipped tar file)
- zoo
Video file formats
- AAF (mostly intended to hold edit decisions and rendering information, but can also contain compressed media essence)
- Animated GIF (simple animation; often avoided because of patent problems)
- ASF (ASF is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-4 is common)
- AVI (AVI is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-1 and a variant of MPEG-4 are common)
- Macromedia Flash (.swf) (complex vector-based animation with sound and interactivity)
- Matroska (*.mkv) (Matroska is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-4 is common)
- MNG (mainly simple animation containing PNG and JPEG objects, often somewhat more complex than animated GIF)
- MPEG
- MXF
- Tarkin (Ogg project)
- Theora (Ogg project)
- OGM (OGM is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; MPEG-4 is common)
- QuickTime (QuickTime is a shell, which enables any form of compression to be used; Sorenson codec is common)
- RealMedia
GIS file formats
- DEM (USGS) (US Geo Survey terrestrial elevation data)
Disk images (a file system used as a random-access archive file inside another file system; extensions include .img and .iso)
Native data (registered objective parametrs .dat .cop .par)