Universal Compression format

[Craig Seeman]

[Carlos Flores] “Quick question”
Not really.
Ranks right up there with “What is the meaning of life?”

Maybe MEPG1 .mpg but you don’t want to go near that if you care about quality/efficiency.

It depends what codecs are available and it depends whether it’s only for playing or post production use.
You have to tell us what you mean be “used.” Just play or for post?

You have to tell us what you really mean by “any computer.” Windows 95, Linux, 10 year old computers?

H.264 .mov or mp4 if they have Quicktime 7 or higher
WMV9 if they have Flip4Mac on Mac.
the older MPEG4 (Part 2) .mp can work with Quicktime 6.
Sorenson 3 .mov can work with Quicktime 5.

[Carlos Flores] “Meaning .mov/.wmv/.flv”
These are wrappers, not codecs and I guarantee there are codecs and variants with those wrappers that WILL NOT PLAY on many computers.

[Brian Alexander]

Uh…

There are way too many variables to go shooting off quick answers to your quick question. Do you know of a universal tape format that can be played with every tape deck? VHS, BETA, DigitBeta, DVCAM, DVCProHD, HDCAM, HDCAM SR, etc…

Photo JPG and DV are universal but they are not distribution based formats, these are for editing.

I’m at a loss for words…How about youtube? Anyone with a browser can see your video then. That’s pretty universal.

You will get solid answers from this forum if you can provide details about what you have to work with and what you are trying to do. What you are asking for is for the Mac and PC guy to hang out and watch the same TV in the same living room and maybe eat at Subway together. Not going to happen.

If you do find some universal format in your quest please let us know what you find.

Thanks.

[Rich Rubasch]

The US government chose high bitrate MPEG-2 to archive it’s digital media files. Not that it is fully cross platform, but it is a format that is becoming sort of universal.

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Daniel Low]

Rich, I kind of agree with you although the US Government does not equal the world (despite what they might think).

MPEG-2 and as such DVD is the probably the worlds most populat video ‘format’

__________________________________________________________________
There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed. … I’m saying we don’t do a new version to fix bugs. We don’t. Not enough people would buy it. You can take a hundred people using Microsoft Word. Call them up and say “Would you buy a new version because of bugs?” You won’t get a single person to say they’d buy a new version because of bugs. We’d never be able to sell a release on that basis.

Bill Gates. Focus Magazine No. 43 (23 October 1995)