Best Video format

[paul]

Which is the best video format other than MPeg that I should put on my website hosting?

[harry]

Videos can be considered as inseparable part of any website hosting.
There are many formats used for storing video, while considering it for web try to use the format which has codec that compresses it to a great level without disturbing the quality of video. File size is much important issue for web video.

Other than mpeg format you can consider using .swf format for using videos on web.

First convert your raw video to flash(.swf) than place this swf file on your webpage, today most of the user have flash installed on their computer so using flash player they can view your video.

[paul]

Thanks harry, I was expecting your reply. I shall check .swf format, btw do you have idea about WMV?

[harry]

WMV stands for Windows Media Video and is a Microsoft product used to encode video. It is not recommeded format for the web..

It requires windows media player and all users are not microsoft savy......

[paul]

Alternatively I find most of the people use window, anyway I need a little counterfeits system like when any one clicks the file it opens a player in the browser.

[brouwer]

I suggest you use Flash Video (flv/swf). It loads easy and has a good compression and a lot of people have the Flash Player installed. I think you should not use Windows Media, because in my experience it loads slow and the browser sometimes hangs a few seconds when loading a webpage with an embedded Windows Media file. With Flash Video, you've got also a lot of choices on the embedded player (what it looks like and what it can do). You can even make your own player if you want.
There are different choices with Flash Video.
A first one is the file format: swf or flv. The first (swf) is a regular Flash file, the player and the video van be in the same file. The second is a file format special for Flash Video (flv). You'll have a player (swf-file) and the an flv-file for each video. I recommend the second choice.
Second, you'll have te choose a codec. There're two codecs for Flash Video: Sorenson and On2 VP6. The second one is better, but it works only by users who have Flash 8 or higher. The first (which is also good) works with Flash 7 or higher. On the website hosting of Adobe you can see how many browsers have installed which version of Flash: www. adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html
I suggest that you use now the older codec (Sorenson), because more users will be able to see it. But in the near future, the adoptation of Flash Player 9 will increase, because Adobe will release that version for Linux in a couple of months (at the moment, the newest version for linux is 7, but you can download a bèta version of version 9 on Adobe Labs).
A good article on Flash Video (in two parts):
-Part 1: www. digital-web.com/articles/the_rise_of_flash_video_part_1
-Part 2: www. digital-web.com/articles/the_rise_of_flash_video_part_2

[harry]

Great information Brouwer,
I personally appreciate your post, keep it up…..

Tell me one thing, when using many Flash Video (flv) files,whether all files will use the same player and would I have to provide plugin for flash player to my visitors.

[brouwer]

Yes, you can use the same player. You can add a link to the website hosting of Adobe where you can download the latest version of the Flash Player (www. adobe.com/go/getflashplayer). If you embed your Flash file properly, users will be prompt to install the version of Flash you've defined in your html-code if they have a lower version in the most browsers.

[Peter]

Windows Media Player is going to be commonly used. There are a lot of people on windows and Windows Media Player comes installed by default.

Maybe offering a choice to your site's visitors would be better. Possibly WMP and Quicktime. Quicktime for Mac users.

[harry]

Ah! brouwer,
suppose my visitor does not have latest version of flash player or flash player itself is not installed on his machine and i haven’t provided link to download it, but still i want my video should be played.

Is there any way to view video even though user don't have player.

[Alex]

What do you mean by that? It is just not possible to view a video without a player. It is like asking to play a DVD without a DVD player, or asking someone to sing while keeping his mouth shut.

[harry]

Alex, that's very true...
But i hope there should be some file format which could be played without using any additional software (player) if this happens then my visitor would not have to worry about player if they don’t have the one but still can view my video.

The concept is similar to using .exe file. I hope you got what I mean to say……

[brouwer]

Originally Posted by harry

Alex, that's very true...
But i hope there should be some file format which could be played without using any additional software (player) if this happens then my visitor would not have to worry about player if they don’t have the one but still can view my video.

The concept is similar to using .exe file. I hope you got what I mean to say……

No, there is no video file format standard supported by a browser. I think that Flash has the highest penetration.

An exe file is a Windows program, that's a different situation then a normal file. You can make an exe file from your Flash videos (with player built in), but then you're file will be around 1 MB bigger (the Flash core is packed in the exe), you cannot play the video in the browser and only Windows users will be able to see it.

[izzetm]

wmv is the best video format.Because it is support all computers.