Contents

Chunk offset atom ('stco')

An atom that identifies the location of each chunk of data in the media’s data stream.

Overview

Chunk offset atoms have an atom type of 'stco'.

The chunk-offset table gives the index of each chunk into the containing file. There are two variants, permitting the use of 32-bit or 64-bit offsets. The latter is useful when managing very large movies. Only one of these variants occurs in any single instance of a sample table atom.

Note that offsets are file offsets, not the offset into any atom within the file (for example, a 'mdat' atom). This permits referring to media data in files without any atom structure. However, be careful when constructing a self-contained QuickTime file with its metadata (movie atom) at the front because the size of the movie atom affects the chunk offsets to the media data.

The layout of a chunk offset atom is as follows.

Chunk offset atom data field

Bytes

Size

4

Type = 'stco'

4

Version

1

Flags

3

Number_of_entries

4

Chunk_offset_table

Variable

Topics

Data fields

See Also

Describing samples