Some many to choose from - Help with formats « Videomaker Community Forums

claycope
Member

Admittedly, I'm a total Noob. I've composed a documentary and would like to offer it as a download. My question is what format(s) should I be considered for rendering? AVI seems large (and more targeted toward DVD applications). MPEG2 seems to be a good fit. What about WMV? Any guidance or the pointing to an article or resource would be greatly appreciated.

Posted 1 year ago #
Derek Sine
Member

Where is your final output?

Derek Sine
Trails Ventures, LLC.

Posted 1 year ago #
robGRAUERT
Member

"AVI seems large (and more targeted toward DVD applications)."

No. MPEG2 is for DVD

H.264 might not be a bad codec. You maintain good quality and compress to a small file size as well. Here's a tutorial I made on compressing for the web:

Get the Video Player

Rob Grauert, Jr
http://www.robgrauert.com
http://command-r.tumblr.com

Posted 1 year ago #
birdcat
Moderator

I personally like MP4 wrapper with H.264 compression or FLV with one of the VP6 variants.

If I'm posting to YouTube, I go with MP4. I recently did about a 3:30 piece in MP4 at 960 X 540 (I forget the bit rate but it was I think 2mbps or 4mbps) which came out to about 55mb.

If I'm hosting on a web page, I often go with FLV (or SWF if it's short).

Bruce Paul
7Squared Productions
http://www.7squared.com

Posted 1 year ago #
claycope
Member

IN theory, people will download the video and watch on their machine. This will not be streamed or hosted at any site. Does that change things?

Posted 1 year ago #
pseudosafari
Member

robgrauert's video is worth a look (above) then, if it's downloaded and watched from machines. He makes a good point about "what software will your viewers use to view the video on their machines?" (Not everyone has Quicktime, for example.) Almost everyone with a PC can run WMV, I'd bet, but can Mac folks? I don't know. Seems like that's a big concern when deciding which format.

Any idea what software they'd be using?

Posted 1 year ago #