Ademultiplexer for digital media files, or media demultiplexer, also called a file splitterbylaymen or consumer software providers, is software that demultiplexes individual elementary streams of a media file, e.g., audio, video, or subtitles and sends them to their respective decoders for actual decoding.[1] Media demultiplexers are not decoders themselves, but are format container handlers that separate media streams from a (container) file and supply them to their respective audio, video, or subtitles decoders.[2]
Playback difficulties (such as no playback, no audio, or no video) may result from several or legacy file splitters for a particular file format being installed on an operating system. This causes decoder-to-file-splitter mismatch resulting in playback failure on media players.