best format for video on the web?

Hi.

OK, I'm hoping that the balance of well-informed opinion on the bbs will suggest an answer to this question.

I have some video footage recorded on a mini-DV camcorder that I want to edit into short clips (perhaps 60s or so max) and put on a website. The editing bit is no problems, what I'm looking for is suggestions on the best format for encoding the video.

Now, by best I mean not only the smallest file, but one that will be playable on the widest variety of platforms. For instance, WMV9, which seems to be fairly good quality and compression ratio, is a pain in the arse to play on, oddly enough, windows 2000! It requires the latest version of mediaplayer to be installed, with all the idiot EULAs that go with it. Ironically, the files (assuming no DRM is used) play fine on linux with mplayer, which made me laugh.

I prefer plain old MPEG 1 for several reasons, but the file size isn't optimal unless the bit rate is pretty low, and then you lose all the detail. Divx of some form might be a good choice.

Anyway, suggestions?

pca

(The video in question is some test footage from my UAV project, shot from about 700 feet over a friends house over the weekend)

Like you said, Divx would probably be a good choice. I haven't encoded much with it, but seeing how easy it is to play, and the fact that it is the only format I've seen that doesn't install spyware along with the codec (AFAIK), it looks pretty good.

I really dislike WMV9. Like you said, you have to have the very latest WMP to play it, and even then it doesn't work for me either. WMV7 is pretty good, though.

I just can't bring myself to encode a single thing in either Quicktime or Real, because other people will have to install those programs which do bad things. QT is a good player and the files always look good, especially the movie previews that stream off their website, but the free version installs that annoying system tray thing, doesn't work at full screen for me, and does a few other background things I dislike. Real is just horrible.

So that's what I consider when I'm encoding. Yeah, it sucks to encode in a MS format, but I have to consider the people who are downloading it.

Check out Codec Corner. It isn't going to answer your question directly, but it's got a great survey of what's available. Xvid might be your best option.

I was faced with this problem when posting some swing dancing videos online. Even though you can use fancier codecs, I decided to go for the least common denominator: QuickTime 3. It works just about anywhere and the quality is "good enough" (although not spectacular).

For some reason, even though I'm running WinXP and I've installed the latest DivX stuff, WMP9 and QuickTime6, I still can't get DivX movies to work properly for me. I imagine other people would have similar difficulties.

I've had only troubles when trying to play divx files. I've gotten them to work, but it was way to much effort (I remember the effort, not the video I ended up playing). I second QT3. It's also much more platform agnostic than the bleeding edge divx or any WM. That's my $0.02.

-Zeke

Agreed. DivX was quite the bitch to get working.

For Windows, I do like Philips' free MPEG-4 player.

I probably agree - I had so many difficulties last month:

I put together a 6 minute 38 second music video (a classic track with some new lyrics, any guesses) for my divisional away day. Did all the work using Moviemaker on my sgi O2. In thinking about output types, I popped it on CD in 3 different 'standard' formats expecting at least one to work under W2k. Utter nightmare - never use avi again, anyway.

Spent many hours downloading codecs and shuffling things around and ended up using Premier to convert to an early QT (might have been 3) and all was finally well.

Old can be good (well I have to say that, I'm in the oldest 50% of my team <sigh>)

Well, to go against what most everyone else is saying, I strongly recommend DivX, *OR* the newer XVid.

You said that you wanted ok compression on a format that just about anyone can play. Well, aside from the people here that seemed to have trouble with is, 99% of "downloadable" "home videos" are Divx / Xvid. You can control the bitrate to a T to make it fit on a CD or DVD or just for your HD..
I do encoding for a fansubber (ack, yes. Anime. Don't hate me now.) every so often, and while it isn't fast, I get really good video out of it..
(Personally, I hate anything QT. Everything I've seen is either bad quality, or the player sucks and ruins it..) Also, I'm NOT on a Mac, so..

Me.

Ditto. I would personally use XviD or DivX if I had to.

I really don't like the QT player on Windows. I've not tried it on a Mac which apparently is much better however. But it's still nothing against the hatred I've got against Real Player

For some reason I can never actually uninstall QT properly and it's made Windows flakey before. Also everybody seems to want to use their own ancient version of QT and insist on installing it as well.

I've got nothing against the actual codec itself as it's reasonably good quality for the bitrate and when it does work then it's fine. But it's just the useless player application that gets installed.

Well, they just killed DiVX.

-Zeke

Not really, the playback codec itself is still free.

Nah. They just rearranged the webpage.

If you enjoy looking at popup ads when browsing and having your online usage reported & tracked, then sure, no problem.

The free viewer contains Gator as explained at DiVX' web site.
-Zeke

Like we said, look below the three options, and you'll see the free DivX codec. The ad-supported is the DivX Pro version.

Look below all the blue "Purchase" buttons on this page

*edit*
Also check out this page

and you'll see the free DivX codec

Hell, the Pro version's only $20 anyway. Why not buy a copy to show your support for the DivX guys?

True, but at least it hasn't been "killed"

Some people say that after DivX Networks closed the OpenDivX project they reused a lot of the code in DivX4. Not sure how true that is though. It's just what's been mentioned before.
It's only important if you're encoding anyway.

Mea Culpa. I'll shut up now.

Z

No problem! It wasn't a terribly smart thing for them to do, since many people aren't looking down there. Of course, the fact that changing their site around just a little caused buzz from /. might have been enough to sell some copies of the Pro edition, so maybe we'll see better encoding jobs out there.

I have grown incredibly frustrated with the quality of encodes out there. I often download TV shows that I've missed, and some people either have no idea how to encode something, they don't check the result before posting it, or they think that if it looks fine to them since they have some bizzare codec installed, it's fine. I've gotten tons of videos that have video that freezes up in the first 2 seconds, while the audio plays fine in the background. I'd say that if these videos don't work on the 5 players I've tried on my PC, and can't be opened with any video editing program, it's a bad encode. Grr.

That's why it's good to use one of the "standards." I'm not a QT fan because of the player, and I'm not a Real fan because of everything about it. I like WMP because it loads quickly, isn't bloated or bubbly, and plays things well (I'm talking about 6.x). That, and going to full-screen appears to be easier than other programs, which is a big issue since that's how I view all my videos.

My preference for QT stems mainly from its being the lowest common denominator so it stands the best chance of success when sending. I don't do much w/computer video other than send the occasional file from my digital camera or burn a VCD from vacation videos. I just hate when a quick 'I'll send you the clip' turns into 4-6 emails and a phone call. Hence QT for me. I agree about the player (and I have the Pro version), the interface blows.

-Zeke