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There are a lot of different video file containers floating around (AVI, WMV, MKV, OGM, etc.), and I've found you can't always trust the file extension. Too often, some confused individual changed it to something that she was more familiar with (for instance, from MKV to AVI), and that can become an issue, especially if you want to do something other than just play it.

What's an easy, reliable way to determine the type of container a video file uses on Windows? I know Media Player Classic does some kind of detection behind the scenes, but it doesn't present that information to the user.

Just a clarification: I'm not asking anything about the streams in the file or the codecs they use (i.e. Divx, MP3, etc), I'm asking about the container they are contained in. If you have a Divx video and and MP3 audio streams in a file, I want to know if it's in an AVI file, an MKV file, or something else.

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updated superuser.com/questions/73780/… – Gerd Klima Nov 24 '09 at 9:52
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Take a look at this exhausting list of codec identifiers. I'd point out GSpot and AVICodec.

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Those aren't what I'm looking for. I want to find out about the container format, not the codec. – cosmic.osmo Nov 23 '09 at 13:54
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Look at the file data itself (binary) and then use info from wotsit to determine file type.

There is also the TrID utility that does this automatically.

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I would like a program that automates something like what you describe, I don't want to do it myself. – cosmic.osmo Nov 24 '09 at 6:31
I added the TrID utility. It did what you asked for an AVI file on my system (have no other files around currently). – Gerd Klima Nov 24 '09 at 9:30
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