Sample Table Atoms

QuickTime Movie File Format Specification, May 1996

Sample Table Atoms

The sample table atom contains information for converting from media time to sample number to sample location. This atom also indicates how to interpret the sample (for example, whether to decompress the video data and, if so, how). This section describes the format and content of the sample table atom.

The sample table has an atom type of 'stbl' . It contains the sample description atom, the time-to-sample atom, the sample-to-chunk atom, the sync sample atom, the sample size atom, the chunk offset atom, and the shadow sync atom.

Figure 0-29 shows the layout of a sample table atom.

Figure 29 The layout of a sample table atom

The sample table atom contains the following data elements.

Size: A 32-bit integer that specifies the number of bytes in this sample table atom.
Type: A 32-bit integer that identifies the atom type; this field must be set to ' stbl' .
Sample description: The sample description atom, described in the next section.
Time-to-sample: The time-to-sample atom, described in "Time-to-Sample Atoms," beginning on [link] .
Sync sample: The sync sample atom, described in "Sync Sample Atoms," beginning on [link] .
Sample-to-chunk: The sample-to-chunk atom, described in "Sample-to-Chunk Atoms," beginning on [link] .
Sample size: The sample size atom, described in "Sample Size Atoms," beginning on [link] .
Chunk offset: A chunk offset atom, described in "Chunk Offset Atoms," beginning on [link] .
Shadow sync: The shadow sync atom. This atom is obsolete.