-
the best video format for my client
Helllo,
I made a small movie for a company. Witch format is the best to give the movie to them? .mov?
I want good quality so they have a good basic to start from.Thank you!
Adriaan. -
5 Replies
-
Usually, you ask the customer what format they want, first. if you don’t know and have to guess, make versions in standard MPEG2 DVD, and data files in h.264, MP4, and Windows Media. They should be able to play *one* of those. You’ll find communicating with a client about formats and tech specs to be one of the most frustrating and troublesome continuing education efforts you need to make. But you have to be patient and coach them thru it until they understand their options and you know what their capabilities are. Or you spend a lot of time playing frisbee with them, exchanging disks only you can view and they can’t. And don’t get me started about explaining FTP downloads to clients. 🙂 “Something is wrong with your video: It worked last month but I just gave the link to someone else and it doesn’t work”.
In my nightmares, a customer asks for “A disk with an 8 millimeter movie on it, for my CD player”. Then I have to play detective to figure out if they mean a DVD, a BluRay, an actual CD-Rom with multimedia files, and of what type, or even an external hard disk drive, with what format. And if the CD player is really a CD-Rom drive in their computer or laptop, or is it a DVD-read-capable drive, and if they have the software installed to play back a DVD or a multimedia file, and what type that would be.
“I don’t know, I just put the disk in the slot, and it plays”. Is how that conversation starts out. I try not to let them hear my forehead hitting the desk.
-
Hi Mark,
LOL, thank you for your clear explanation. So I have to start with the communication with my client, and ask what they want. There is one 1 way solution, I understand.
Thank you!!!! -
H264 or mp4 files are the closest to universal but there is a whole lot more to the equation including how the files are to be used – web, DVD, bluray etc etc.
So no magic ‘one file to rule them all’ exists.
-
Thank you Michael,
And what is your comment about mov files?
-
.mov simply means the file is in a quicktime wrapper which most computers are OK with although it is primarily a Mac format but most PCs have quicktime components or quicktime player and Linux also has players that handle .mov files.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up