The full form of fourcc is Four-Character Codes

A FourCC (“four-character code”) is a sequence of four bytes (typically ASCII) used to uniquely identify data formats. It originated from the OSType or ResType metadata system used in classic Mac OS and was adopted for the Amiga/Electronic Arts Interchange File Format and derivatives. The idea was later reused to identify compressed data types in QuickTime and DirectShow.

In 1984, the earliest version of a Macintosh OS, Apple System 1, was released. It used the single-level Macintosh File System with metadata fields including file types, creator (application) information, and forks to store additional resources. All these fields are four-character codes known as OSType. It was possible to change this information without changing the data itself, so that they could be interpreted differently. Identical codes were used throughout the system, as type tags for all kinds of data.

In 1985, Electronic Arts introduced the Interchange File Format (IFF) meta-format (family of file formats), originally devised for use on the Amiga. These files consisted of a sequence of “chunks”, which could contain arbitrary data, each chunk prefixed by a four-byte ID. The IFF specification explicitly mentions that the origins of the FourCC idea lie with Apple.

This IFF was adopted by a number of developers including Apple for AIFF files and Microsoft for RIFF files (which were used as the basis for the AVI and WAV file format). Apple referred to many of these codes as OSTypes. Microsoft and Windows developers refer to their four-byte identifiers as FourCCs or Four-Character Codes. FourCC codes were also adopted by Microsoft to identify data formats used in DirectX, specifically within DirectShow and DirectX Graphics.