BDAV

BDAV stands for Blu-ray Disc Audio-Visual. It is a container format used on Blu-ray discs to store audiovisual content intended for playback on BD-ROM players. BDAV content is used for BD-Video discs and is defined as part of the Blu-ray Disc Association specifications. It is typically used alongside the BDMV structure, which contains navigation, metadata, and playlist information; together they form a Blu-ray disc’s file system. The BDAV portion is responsible for housing the actual audio and video streams.

In terms of technical characteristics, BDAV streams are usually encoded as MPEG-2 Transport Streams and can include modern video codecs such as H.264/AVC and VC-1. The streams are commonly stored in a transport stream container (.m2ts) inside the BDAV data structure; playback is coordinated by playlists and timing information to present chapters, audio track choices, subtitles, and alternate angles.

BDAV has been in use since the early Blu-ray standardization and is widely supported by Blu-ray players and software decoders. It is distinguished from other Blu-ray components by focusing on the storage of audiovisual data rather than navigation data, though in practice BDAV content is accessed through the disc’s overall navigation system.