Best format for web play?

[Alex Elkins]

I always compress my files for web using Quicktime’s H.264 codec. That’s fine as long as you’re then using a Quicktime player on your website to play them, but on a lot of sites like YouTube they play videos using Flash, thus re-encoding everything anyway, so maybe compressing using Flash would work better. It depends where the videos will be viewed. I don’t think you can do that using FCP or After Effects though.
Saying that, I’ve uploaded videos to YouTube that have been compressed using H.264 and they still look pretty good, but to get the absolute best you could out of web videos you just need to encode to the format relative to what it will be playing in.
Both formats work on PC and Mac anyway, so that’s not really an issue.

[Ed Dooley]

Do a search of this, the Compression Techniques, and Web Streaming forums. There are lots and lots of posts, and you’ll get far more than 3 different answers too. 🙂
Most of the world have PCs and Windows Media is the built-in format (QuickTime is the Mac built-in format). Anybody with a PC and iTunes also has QT, so Quicktimes (H.264 or others) will play on both platforms in that case. Flash plays on both platforms. For the best quality/market penetration I would still use the ON2VP6 codec for Flash. It now supports H.264, but not evey Flash user has upgraded.
For one format on both, I’d go Flash (ON2VP6 codec), for WMV use WMV9, for QT I’d go H.264.
Ed

[Chris Poisson]

Yes, there are many answers. Flash players seem to be the most common among Macs and PCs, for that reason I switched all the movies on my site to Flash. Video2SWF is a great little converter, cheap too.

But, another solid answer is to put up choices for people, such as QT, SWF and WMV, then all can have a view without the fuss of downloading a plugin and installing.

Have a wonderful day.

[Ed Dooley]

And that’s what we do. The default for us is WMV9 (even though I like H.264 quality better) with buttons for QT and Flash. In our case, we have exact copies of the web page, same thumbnails, same everything except when you select a format you get that format when you click on a thumbnail.
Ed

[Paul Ravillino]

Thanks everybody for your prompt replys…

So, if I want to export using ON2VPC, WMV9 or 2SWF, I need to buy something extra? I don’t see these in my list of options. I think the one I’d most like to use is the Flash ON2VPC.

Thanks again,

Paul

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Paul,
I tried an H264 with the .flv extension.
Flash player and QT player can both open them on the computers.
I’ve to try how works when uploaded to my web site.
Rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[John Fishback]

The following link is to an excellent article comparing a number of web video codecs.

https://digitalcontentproducer.com/videoencodvd/revfeat/encoding_best_practices_0609/index1.html

John

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[Ed Dooley]

Flix standard is cheap, but limited. Flix Exporter is a plug-in that works in FCP, QT Pro, Compressor, and other programs, and is a great plug-in. Flix Pro is a stand-alone app with all the bells and whstles. Episode has the ON2VP6 codec, as does Squeeze 5 Pro (the non-Pro version has the Spark codec, not as good as ON2). Cheapest of the useful ones is the Flix plug-in.
Ed

https://flix.on2.com/