If you are producing, and then uploading video to the web, you need to be aware of video formats in any one of these three stages of the process: Shoot, Edit and share. There are several ways to share your video. It may be via the internet, or share it with the use of a DVD, Bluray, or in some case with a flash drive, or other type of video card.
What kind of video comes out of your camera? This is often referred to as the source video or raw video format.
When you are evaluating whether a format is the “right” one or not, the three main evaluating criteria you should use are: and........the fourth?
Depending on how a video clip will function, or interact with the message you want to share allows for any one of a dozen or so popular formats to be among the favorite one to choose. Choose wisely, or it may come back in the most haunted way.
For the Internet, you want smaller file sizes, because you have to have. Even though the web’s capacity for video delivery keeps growing, and most people have broadband, it is still best to keep file sizes as small as possible. A large video file is more likely to encounter buffering issues and drive the viewer crazy. The smaller the file size while still maintaining high quality, the easier it will stream, which may very well make the difference between whether someone bothers to watch the video you offer, or not.
There can be huge differences in size from format to format depending on the compression used. I’ve experimented around with this and I can take the same video, convert it to QuickTime and get an 80 megabyte file or convert it to an mpeg 4 with H264 compression and get a 10 megabyte file (you can also compress QuickTime using . H264 video codec. I will not go into detail of what a codec is all about. No need to confuse you any more then you may already be. Nor will I go into the audio aspect of video. For the most part it is mp3 or a .wav.
Rapid motion and annimations within the video can will increase the file size and are more difficult to compress with resulting high-quality. So, it is important to keep that in mind when creating your video.
We are talking about compressed video files for sharing formats, and all compression is based off redundency within the footprint of the video you have. So with that being said here are a few of the most ….
Hey! let’s take some time and go over the most common video file formats. As you probably know, the last 3 or 4 letters on the end of a video file’s name indicates format or file container. Just like .txt indicates a word , or text file, .mov indicates a QuickTime move file; .wmv stands for windows media video and so forth, and so on.
Here are a few of the common ones used by most video, video web applications. There are several others in the making. However .Duck did not make it. Along with the Amiga base video, as they are gone.
AVCHD (.mts) is a high end, high-definition (HD) format originally developed by Sony and Panasonic for HD home theater systems. It’s not a sharing format for the web because it is quite huge, but it has become very common as a lot of newer HD camcorders, both professional, and consumer ones, which record in this format. Video in this format would be for the recording of your video project and serves as a master clip you may use to edit with.
AVCHD is in its infancy as a format and since it’s still fairly new and compatibility with certain video editing programs is an issue at the present time. Very few video editing software applications have begun to support this format most can not handle it well yet. Additionally, playback of AVCHD files requires speedy CPUs and a sufficient amount of RAM. That makes this format a little difficult to work with, but it maintains high quality. As time goes by, it will no doubt become easier to use. At the pesent; the media used to hold final cuts are the BluRay discs. Standard DVD are not for HD video.
This is a long-time standard developed by Microsoft and has been around as long as digital video has.avi particularly when uncompressed video tends to be HUGE, way too large for the internet. AVI is more for the beginning, and editing of a video project, not the final output. DVD is of the Mpeg 2 format, which is encoded for playback on a standalone dvd player. .AVI, is not really a sharing format. For the most part .avi is for just about any video editing program and the quality is used for edited master quality in many cases.
AVI is windows-based and is virtually universal. Problem is, not all AVIs are created equally and you can still run into compatibility issues. AVI is what’s known as a container format, which means it contains multiple streams of different type data, including a control track and separate video and audio streams. Now, what streams inside the container is not necessarily the same from one avi video to the next as the codecs used for compression can vary.
How about the .flv format? Flash video is the single most common sharing format being used on the web today. You’ll see the .FLV file extension on videos encoded by Adobe Flash software to play within the Adobe Flash Player. Almost everyone (99.9%) has the adobe player installed in their b web rowser and so this has fast become the most common online video viewing platform.
Almost all the video sharing siites such as You Tube stream video in flash. You can upload formats other than flash, and those sites will convert it into flash for streaming to the end user. Notable users of the Flash Video format include YouTube, Yahoo! Video, MySpace, and many others. Many television news operations are also using Flash Video on their websites. Most of those sites accept uploads in a handful of formats like QuickTime, mpeg4, or wmv, and then they convert it to flash or MP4 before actually putting it out on the net.
In addition to the nearly universal flash video player, FLV is popular because it gives one of the smallest file sizes after compression yet it retains fairly good quality. I personally us FLV for showing video here on our website.. several different players can be incorporated for playback options.
If you self-host your own videos, you should convert them to flash for greatest compatibility with the highest number of Internet viewers.
Although FLV’s or Adobe flash are the most common format found on the web today, the standard is moving towards the use of using MP4 H.264 files within flash players as it is compatible with both online and mobile, not to mention some HTML5 browser support (Safari, Chrome). It is worth to remember that not all web browsers support certain video formats. Flash is continuously updated by the Adobe team.
The mpeg format was developed by the Motion Picture Experts Group. This international group was established in 1988 to develop standards for digital audio and video formats but they’re not the only group doing so as anyone using digital video files formats knows. There was the Mpeg1 and then theMpeg2 full screen file format, also .mpg2, mpg1 are noted .mpeg file extentions
The mp4 is a great sharing format for the internet. It’s small but looks fairly clean. It’s the video format employed by a growing number of camcorders and cameras and it is highly recommended.
In fact, YouTube recommends using MP4 format. You Tube now allows for multiple video formats to be uploaded, and then converts them either to .flv or .mp4 for distribution.
As mentioned earlier, more and more online video publishers are moving to MP4 (with H.264 as the video compression codec) as the standard internet sharing format with use within both Flash players as well as HTML5. This is one of the favoriate, if not the best format that we recommend for online delivery.
A .wmv file indicates a windows media video file. Windows Media Video is used for both streaming and downloading content via the Internet. Microsoft’s Windows Media Player, which is an application bundled with Windows operating systems, is built for WMV files. WMV files are tiny. WMV will give you one of the smallest final file sizes. As you might expect, this means they are compressed so much they really do not look very good. In fact, I think the resolution is very low quality, and not one I would use. But a tiny file size can be a real advantage for some things. If you get an email with an actual video attached instead of just a link to a video, it is probably a wmv file. They are the only ones small enough to attach to an email.
A .mov extension is used to identify an Apple Quick Time Movie. .MOV is an extremely common sharing format. It is considered one of the best looking and it does look great but the files sizes are big. QuickTime hasn’t been a Mac-only program for quite some time. QuickTime versions and players exist on almost all PCs. Some people argue that QuickTime is far superior to similar Windows based applications and I personally use Quick Time for that very reason. For the majority of the videos I upload to the web are either QuickTime format, MPEG4, sometimes Mpg1.
If you see a video file on your computer labeled MSWMM, be aware that this is a windows movie maker project file and not a video or movie file designed for sharing. MSWMM will only play within Movie Maker. When you want to save your movie to share it, use Movie Maker to convert it into a sharing format, such as .mpeg4 or .wmv. The difference between sharing formats and project file formats confuses many people. No matter what video editing software you use, a project file is designed for working on within that particular editing program. You must convert the project file to watch it on any other player.
I hope this information helps you. Contact us here at Various Video Services for any questions you may have. Let us help.