which video format for web?

[MikeyPhoenix]

hey, im getting ready to render some videos for the web (to sell to webmasters) and i want to know your opinions on what type of formats you would prefer...

I am thinking i will make a big 10-15 broadband video, 10-15 one minute smaller clips for 56k users, and 20 second (is this good? shorter? longer?) clips for movie tgp posters...

but, should it be asf, wma, mpg, mpa, rm, mov, all of them? your opinions are appreciated...

Mikey
mike@phoenixcontent.com
PhoenixContent.com/ (http://www.PhoenixContent.com)

[battuss]

Most people prefer mpegs, surfers that is.
Asf does a good job for me but some of my members complain they cant play the files.
Divx give great quality and small sizes but there are stil alot of people that dont have a divx code installed.
So, to be safe i'd say Mpeg.

[shunga]

While MPEG gives the best quality, you should perhaps think of it more as the "raw" format. MPEG's use a lot of diskspace, even when you start to reduce the quality. Whatever formats you use I'd recommend having a high quality format either in MPEG, AVI or Quicktime, as these are the easiest to convert to another format, for example to RM. I would use AVI, ASF and Quicktime at the highest quality, and ASF and RM as dialup streams, all clips cut at two minutes each. I'd also include the raw MPEG's if possible.

[Groovy]

mpeg for sure

[Palleib]

Mpegs for sure everybody can play mpegs
For tgps min 10 secs size max 1mb
The clips for tgps doesn´t has to be great quality.

[ProgGod]

i suggest windows media... Its higher quality, and half the size of mpegs. Plus its a streaming format, so the movie starts playing before the download is finishd

[mistman]

If you want the highest quality and lowest file size use divx. Its way superior to the other movie formats.

All you have to do is put a link to the codec next to your movies like most big movie sites do.

Just download the codec and you can encode/play movies with it.
http://www.divx.com/download/divx.php

[ProgGod]

Actually i do believe windows media is a higher quality smaller size format http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/ubb/smile.gif

and most people already have it installed

[Bear]

I can't say I am an expert in this field but I have doing some streaming media projects. So may be I can give you some information.

Here are some of the most popular format on the web:

Mpeg : not good on web. too big. don't u think you will download 1 hour movie of 640MB?

Quicktime: good quality, but comapre to Real or Windows Media, I will sure take Rreal or WM.

Real: support in Windows and Linux. Quality is not that good compre with WM8 or DIVX.

DIVX: current version is 4.0. 2 pass encoding + many other great improvements. but lack of streaming server.

Windows meida: current version is WM8. The best quality. you can encode 60 mins movies in 120MB and keep the quality. but the encoding time is so long and it only has streaming server on Windows.

Each code has strong and weakness. It's depends on your choice.