Posted by J.O. Aho on 04/08/07 06:35

James Hutton wrote:
> I'm building a day by day history page, and I've managed to get hold of
> several audio and video clips from the time. (I've already sought
> permission from the copyright holders to host them.) Some of these are a
> simple <embed> of youtube videos, however there are also several
> multi-mB .mp3 files and video files currently in .mpg and .wmv formats.
>
> I wonder what the "best" format is, and whether media should be
> streamed, downloaded into a standalone player, or should I be all
> dictatorial and not give the user any choice ;-) !

As mpeg is supported on most platforms and is well suited for streaming, I do
recommend it strongly, of course it will be larger than "divx" files, which
are less suited for streaming, specially on microsoft systems.

For audio mp3 is quite common, but there are operating systems that do not
include support for it due shady licenses, so ogg may be a better option,
which gives you better quality if you have the original audio in raw format
(converting mp3->ogg won't make the audio better).


> I realise there will be no right or wrong answer, but I'd like to please
> "most of the people, most of the time."

Then you should ditch any thought about wmv and wma formats as those are not
open formats and limited more or less to one operating system.

--

//Aho

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