MP4 stands for MPEG-4 Part 14, a file format for playing music and video. It is a movie or video clip compressed in MPEG-4 file, and is widely used to share videos on the Internet. MP4s are made up of several types of media, including audio, video, subtitles and still images stored together in a single file. Besides, it can also store advanced content, such as 3D graphics, menus, and user interaction.

MP4 was created and published in 1998. And now in the mainstream market, it is becoming more and more popular. MP4 technology compresses files, in order to get a smaller size and faster speed. This process is similar to that of MP3 technology, but much more advanced and complicated. It decreases the size of the files considerably. This means that the MP4 technology can remove all unnecessary information, but without any quality lost.

MP4 makes videos much more accessible, and easy and quick to be downloadable from the Internet. The video in MP4 can be watched during the downloading process, and is not required to be saved to the hard drive first. To playback the video is also very simple. The MP4 videos not only can be played in real time, it can be saved, stored and watched later on a variety of players. And the output quality of MP4 format is good.

The MP4 technology is widely used in the Internet business, such as in the ads or products' promotion. These short videos are easy to produce.

Many video programs and a variety of hardware devices can support MP4 files. There are many programs that can be used to open MP4 files:
Windows operating system: Apple iTunes, Roxio Creator 2010, Apple QuickTime Player, VideoLAN VLC media player, Microsoft Zune portable media player, Other movie players
Linux operating system: VideoLAN VLC media player
Mac operating system: Apple iTunes, Roxio Popcorn 4, Roxio Toast 10 Titanium, Apple QuickTime Player, VideoLAN VLC media player, other movie players