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Hi All,
It is time to revisit the choice of video formats on the site. When I switched to RealPlayer format only, there were two reasons: 1) I needed to use it for streaming and 2) I felt it had the best quality and crispest for the lowest filesize.
Since the streaming video section of the site never really took off, and since a few people have complained about RealPlayer, I thought it was time to revisit the choice of video file formats. I don’t really want to supply multiple formats- takes too long to encode, upload and takes up a lot of space when you have 100+ MB video files sitting around.
The ones which are easy for me to do are the ones which my encoding software, cleaner XL, supports: windows media WMV, quicktime MOV, MPEG-2 and -4 (though MPEG-2 isn’t really suitable for web video, at least the way cleaner encodes it- huge files and crap quality).
To make the poll simple, I’ve just put up two choice- stick with Real or move to something else. If you’ve got a strong opinion on what format you’d prefer, post a reply and let me know!
If enough people want a change in format, I can start encoding new videos in a different format.
Cheers, Hywel.
Not “Anything Else” though, Mpeg-4 quite specifically. Quicktime MOV is a moot point since it’s not a real format, Its only a container, the newest files contain mp4, older ones motion-jpeg, cinepak or sorenson3. Realplayer is fine but I hear the player is not so great. WMP is great on Windows, and awful on anything else so so really use only if you are sure that only windows users use this site, Mpeg2 is a HUGE format used for DVD, not the best for web video.
Mp4 scales well, from mobile phones to computers and DVD, so quality should be good, is standards compliant so good players are available for Windows, Mac and Linux
so, one vote for mp4 please (and real mp4, not MOV ones, as they aren’t standards compliant and dont work with non-mac players so good)
quicktime and mp4 please from me also
I think Real-Player is a very good format. There is a free player for almost all systems, an d the videos play in older players too.
So i vote for leave it like it is.
I prefer Windows WMV. It is the closest thing to a standard which most the wesites support. Using this minimizes having to use multiple players (i.e. Real, Quicktime) as often.
Well so far it looks like most people are happy as things are. I think WMV is the only serious competitor- I’ll leave the poll running a bit longer and see if the answer changes but right now it looks like staying with Real is OK for most people.
Cheers, Hywel.
real media & divx are the best 🙂
Best ratio quality/size :smoke2
I know this is a little bit of an older topic, but i.d like to throw in my support of Apple’s H.264 codec…you can make AMAZING high quality video available at about the same file sizes you currently offer to download…..it gets rid of the artifact problem and is compatible with all mac and pc systems. –> also just as a curious question…with the new iPod video coming out…I think we should get some dowloads formated for that 🙂
Hmmmm… any idea where I can find the format specs for the iPod videos? Couldn’t find any on Apple’s site.
Cheers, Hywel.
H.264 video: up to 768 Kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec.,
.m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formatsMPEG-4 video: up to 2.5 mbps, 480 x 480, 30 frames per sec
.m4v, .mp4 and .mov file formats…groan
30 fps is a real pain as all my stuff is shot on PAL 25 frames per second progressive. I’d have to see what Cleaner XL can do in the way of upcoding.
Weird that the two formats have different pixel sizes and aspect ratios, too.
Cheers, Hywel.
For some reason I can’t donload the real videos sometimes. I’d prefer the WMV.
Cheers
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