A complete guide to audio and video formats. Learn the difference between containers (MP4, MKV, MOV, AVI, WebM, FLV) and codecs (MP3, AAC, OGG, Opus, FLAC, WAV, H.264, H.265, VP9, AV1), their browser support, and which format to use for music, podcasts, streaming, and editing.
Most people mix up file format and codec. This guide uses a simple shipping-box analogy to explain what a container is, what a codec does, and why renaming a file never fixes playback — with real lessons from building an in-browser converter at tools.beer.
Most people think ffmpeg is a "format converter" that turns mp4 into mkv with one command. It's actually a full multimedia factory pipeline. This guide uses one diagram to explain demux → decode → filter → encode → mux, and shares real lessons from running ffmpeg in the browser and on the desktop at tools.beer — including why some conversions are fast and some are slow.
Many people assume browser-based transcoding runs on a backend server. In reality it runs ffmpeg inside your own browser via WebAssembly. This article explains how it loads, why it needs two special HTTP headers, why it is slower than the desktop version, and how large a file it can handle, with real lessons from tools.beer.
Learn how to convert JSON to CSV using an online JSON to CSV converter, Excel/Google Sheets, and code examples. Covers converting JSON files to CSV, JSON Lines (NDJSON), and handling nested JSON structures.
When you convert a video to MP3, why is the file so much smaller yet still "sounds fine"? This beginner-friendly guide uses everyday analogies - a vacuum storage bag and juicing fruit - to explain lossless vs lossy compression, with the real codec choices we made building tools.beer's converter (MP3/AAC = lossy, WAV/FLAC = lossless).
You click one button and a hundreds-of-MB mp4 becomes a few-MB mp3. What actually happens behind that click? Using a simple "unbox the parcel, keep the audio" analogy, this guide walks through demux, audio extraction, decode, re-encode and mux, and shares the real pitfalls we hit building the tools.beer converter (AAC must go in an M4A container, generation loss, web vs desktop).
Many converters turn an mp4 into another mp4, take minutes, and look slightly worse. Most of the time you only wanted a new container — which stream copy does instantly and losslessly. This guide uses a "recook vs change the plate" analogy, plus real bugs we hit building tools.beer's in-browser and desktop converters.
Parquet is a binary columnar format with compression, encoding, row groups/pages, and rich metadata. This article explains why opening it in Notepad/VS Code looks like “garbage”, and the right ways to inspect and debug it (schema, preview, SQL).