One of the best things about the Android operating system is how many options it provides. It combines the power of Linux with a vast array of mobile-focused additions. However, the number of options means that there’s often overlap between them.
Some of the most significant of these involve file management. Among these, the overlap between the Media Transfer Protocol (MTP), Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP), and standard file access can be the most confusing.
The first thing to keep in mind is that MTP and PTP are protocols (used via USB interface) rather than file systems. A file system is a lower-level encoding – think of the digital information in its most raw form.
But protocols can be used to access the file system even if your operating system doesn’t have native support. You can think of the MTP and PTP as a shared language of sorts that almost every machine can “speak”.
What’s more, both PTP and MTP are old enough that while support might not be universal it’s still incredibly common.
With PTP being the older and therefore more widely supported, and MTP is PTP’s newer, slightly less supported, but more versatile sibling.
Media Transfer Protocol (MTP)
MTP is one of the more common ways to transfer media files, such as music and images, between your computer and your Android phone (via a USB connection). It has the name media transfer protocol for good reason. This protocol was developed with media files in mind.
MTP’s Definition and Purpose
The MTP protocol handles the vast majority of image and video files that you’d find on a phone or computer.
Some of the most common examples of image formats include jpg, png, and gif. Some of the most common video formats supported by MTP include mp4, avi, mkv, and wma.
It also includes audio formats like AAC, WAV, and Ogg. This even includes playlists, album art, and most information you’d find embedded within media files. It’s often this associated metadata like album art that makes MTP so important.
When files are accessed via MTP their multimedia nature is put front and center. It’s less like using a barebones transfer protocol such as FTP and more like being able to browse media in a record store. You can easily access tracks, album art, etc at a glance.
Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP)
You might wonder what role the picture transfer protocol plays in this given that MTP supports images. Part of the reason why both protocols exist is that PTP is the predecessor of MTP.
MTP was built using PTP as a foundation and incorporates much of what makes PTP work so well for images. MTP essentially applies what PTP does for images to other media types. But there are some good reasons why PTP is still in use.
PTP’s Definition and Purpose
Like MTP, PTP gives special attention to the metadata embedded within image files like gifs, jpg, png, and more.
As the name suggests, PTP was initially developed to make it easier and more convenient to transfer files from devices like cameras to computers and phones.
PTP also made it easier to perform file transfers in the opposite direction. It’s especially notable as a lightweight protocol that’s often implemented in standalone cameras in addition to smartphones.
Comparison of MTP and PTP
Given that MTP was created on top of PTP they share several features. MTP is essentially PTP but extended to add more file formats.
File types supported
It’s the file formats that are the main and most easily recognized difference between the two protocols. PTP supports image file formats like PNG, BMP, GIF, and JPG.
MTP builds on that to offer support for video files like MOV, avi, WMV, mp4, and more. On top of that, MTP also supports some mixed format file formats like pdf or doc files.
Data transfer speed and efficiency
PTP was the original multimedia transfer protocol and as such it does lag behind MTP in some respects. Transfer speed is one of the more notable examples of its legacy status. Even the largest photos are fairly small in comparison to video files and PTP was designed around that fact.
Likewise, when PTP was designed the modern storage sizes and impressive ceilings on high-resolution photographs hadn’t become widespread. This led to PTP’s design focusing on smaller file sizes than one might expect.
As such, PTP tends to be slower and does not work as well on larger transfers. This doesn’t mean it’s incapable of doing such. It’s simply that transferring files with PTP tends to take longer than with MTP.
Device and OS compatibility
PTP predates MTP to a significant extent. This means that even devices and operating systems that were being phased out as late as the early 2000s still have a solid chance of supporting PTP. MTP was built on PTP, and as such it lacks the same breadth of support seen with PTP.
PTP is natively supported by Windows ME and following iterations of the operating system. Windows Vista was the first version of Windows to ship with built-in support for MTP.
That said, because MTP has similar functionality to PTP, you’ll often see it as the first protocol supported in new systems. For example, the Haiku operating system saw MTP support before PTP.
Use Cases in Android Devices
So far you’ve seen the abstract description of the protocols. But what are PTP and MTP used for?
Typical scenarios for using MTP
As you might expect, most of the uses for MTP revolve around media files. From larger video files to simple selfies.
Transferring various media files
When people think of MTP it’s usually in the context of transferring media files. The protocol essentially translates information into something the underlying operating system can understand.
Drivers need to deal with the actual mechanics involved with file systems and hardware. However, the protocol is essentially a shared language that allows operating systems to see your phone or other supported device as just another storage location.
When you plug an Android phone into your computer using USB it’ll typically ask you whether you want to operate through MTP, PTP, or to browse files.
The exact terminology will generally differ per device manufacturer. For example, some phones will ask if you want to transfer pictures, video, or files rather than using the protocol’s names. But these are generally just different ways of asking whether you want to use MTP or PTP. However, some manufacturers and operating systems also let you make that same connection wirelessly.
Managing device storage
The ability to see remote media as a standard drive, no matter the underlying file system, also has another nice side effect.
The operating system can easily work with remote storage in a platform-agnostic way that will essentially give you the same data options as a removable drive.
So you can plug your phone into your computer and it can assign a drive designation to its media contents. And that holds even if your computer doesn’t have driver support for the phone’s file system.
For example, you could still connect to an Android device that uses the ext4 operating system even if your Windows computer doesn’t have ext4 support.
All the computer and Android devices need is MTP to act as a translator of sorts. If that’s the case then you can access the Android device even without filesystem drivers. And once connected you can rename, delete, or move files around.
Typical scenarios for using PTP
The typical scenarios for using PTP are similar to MTP. However, there are a few differences to keep in mind.
Transferring photos and videos
The main thing to keep in mind with PTP is compatibility. If you’re connecting your phone to an older system then you’ll almost certainly be able to use PTP. This is one of the major reasons why you’d use it over MTP. You might assume that, given their names, you’d only be able to transfer pictures with MTP.
However, PTP is a protocol rather than a strictly compiled dll or other binary. This means that it’s up to the programmers implementing PTP to allow or disallow certain functionality.
And it isn’t uncommon for programmers to implement some level of video support into PTP. While this isn’t a standard, it’s also common enough that it shouldn’t be too surprising to see it come up.
Integration with photo management software
Another important point about protocols is that they act as a universal translation layer. Instead of implementing complex file system specs a developer essentially just needs to tie their software into abstracted software hooks in an API. In practical terms, this means that PTP and MTP support is extremely common in photo management software.
It’s quite common to simply hook your phone into a computer and see advanced image editing become available.
Partially because of the small size of photos, and partially because of ease of implementation, it’s fairly easy to code impressive functionality into a photo editing package that interfaces with Android devices. This has led to the widespread integration of PTP with photo management programs.
Leave a Reply