Posted by cwdjrxyz on 04/08/07 16:50

On Apr 8, 5:20 am, "J.O. Aho" <u...@example.net> wrote:
> cwdjrxyz wrote:
> > On Apr 8, 1:21 am, James Hutton <james.hut...@dsl.NOSPAM.pipex.com>
> > 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 ;-) !
>
> >> I realise there will be no right or wrong answer, but I'd like to please
> >> "most of the people, most of the time."
>
> >> James
>
> > If you include only one format for video, then use the modern flv/swf
> > method. The reason is that more computers will play flash than any
> > other format.
>
> Thats quite untrue, even if there is an opensource project for a flash player,
> it do not play flash well and official flash player supports only x86
> machines. Mpeg is a lot more supported format and could even be played on a
> Commodore C64.
>
> --
>
> //Aho

Mpeg is the format often used for capturing video to a HD. However for
streaming by either progressive download or a dedicated streaming
server, it seems to be little used by major video sites. Many other
formats give better results for streaming at the much lower bit rates
often used for video on the web. Of course the best format to use
would be a vob as used on a DVD. A vob is just a special mpeg format,
but to use it on the web would require over 10Mbps, so it is seldom
used. The recent surveys of what video on the web can be played by
computers that I have seen indicate that flash is the most often
playable. Also wmv often is used, likely because there are so many
Microsoft OS computers, and the WMP usually comes pre-installed on
them. Open source is of no importance for the flash viewer, since the
flash player is free and even installed on most computers sold in
recent years. One does not have to use the full flash authoring
software for authoring much video, and there are several limited flash
encoders for this for those who have no need for the full flash
authoring suite. The results using such encoders are more than
adequate. The flv/swf example I show on the VideoZoo page is of about
the same quality as the better of the other video formats encoded at
about the same file size. The use of flv/swf format instead of the
older swf format for video has many advantages. Of course basic swf is
used for many other things than videos.

[Back to original message]