Whats the best video format to put on your website? I've read that its WMV but that doesnt' make sense to me. What if the user isn't using Windows? Mpeg isn't an option for me at this point.
What I would like is sort of a psuedo stream where if somebody clicks the file it opens a player in the browser... or if they click 'save target as' they download the movie.

I have links to both avi and flash on my site that uses video.

I guess it depends on WHAT you are doing, how you have it setup, and your target market. I mostly have windows people on my site, but Mac users are able to use my software via boot camp and VPC. If you are doing tutorials, it is best to have options (if you can). I use www.techsmith.com products for my projects. The avi is actually a .exe that opens its own video player (they can see the video even if they do not have a video player installed on their computer). People can download to the desktop or play. If they do not like .exe, they can use the flash, then download the avi later.

No complaints so far....

Xine and mplayer both play WMV on *nix. Microsoft also makes a version of WMP for Mac that plays WMV as well.

I think wmv, since everybody use Windows :)

Out of those choices .mov but my favorite would be streaming flash files or FLV. Extremely easy to convert a large avi/mov/etc into a tiny flash file that can be streamed with great quality.

I prefer .wmv on websites... I'm a full time linux user and it all works fine for me. :)

I also prefer .wmv for websites.

.mov doesnt work for me in Linux.

if you want quality with low file size , try .rv

Without question, my video format of choice for online streaming is .flv. It's the most flexible, in many cases most compact, very easy to make if you have basic experience with Flash, and it looks the best when inserted into a Web page. Perhaps you're in a position to consider a format outside of the three you mentioned?

Well I'm not totally against other formats. Its just that I'm thinking of stuff that my video editor exports with ease.
I don't actually have Flash. I just use Swishmax when I need to make swfs. If your format is flv can people still download the video onto their hard drive and watch it when they like?

For the sake of WMV... What are good dimensions in all of your opinions. Up untill recently i used 640x480 and then realized I didn't drop any frames during capture if I sized down.
The way I'm planning to use it isn't anything important like tuts. Just fun little videos here and there. Vidblogs, Random nonsense, Weird wildlife occurances like the time a bird somehow got into my house and was flying around... stuff like that.

You would need something like FLVPLayer to download the video and watch it. I'm not aware if there is an FLV player for other operating systems or not.

It's also worth noting that all (generally speaking) operating systems already come pre-installed with video software and not Flash plugins so from an accessibility standpoint, flash is probably not the way to go.

Using FLV format is sort of meant to stave off people viewing offline. If you want to go this route, then stick with one of the media you mentioned in the beginning. For streaming though, Flash all the way.

cd-mchase, in my experience, you are MUCH more likely to see Flash as a default plug-in versus Quicktime or Real Player. Windows Media Player is about the only one that you can guarantee will be available on all Windows machines. Last I checked, XP came with Flash installed in IE, but not Real or Quicktime. But then, you have the problem in reverse with Mac and other OSs. The reason I prefer Flash (other than the quality to file-size ratio is spectacular) is that no one OS has an agenda against it. ALL media players are plug-ins. ALL are optional technology. I think there's something to be said for going with the most universally accepted and supported one.

In terms of accessibility, the defaulkt Flash interfaces work well with keyboard commands. I have not tested them on screenreaders yet, but I can do so and report back within the next week.

I think avi is the best...
avi has the best quallity video..

My vote goes to WMV.

AVI does not have the best quality video. Then again it's all about the compression you use on your final video file.

K it IS possible in some cases to get WMV to work on linux. But who is your intended audience? Putting up a bunch of WMV files on a site designed for old-school PPC linux users... would tick a lot of your users off.

K it IS possible in some cases to get WMV to work on linux. But who is your intended audience? Putting up a bunch of WMV files on a site designed for old-school PPC linux users... would tick a lot of your users off.

There's no problem with linux users and .wmv files... I don't think there is one extension of audio files I (linux users) cannot play.

There's no problem with linux users and .wmv files... I don't think there is one extension of audio files I (linux users) cannot play.

Yes but you are not all linux users... trust me, some gentoo/LFS guys and ppl running linux on PPC, SPARC and other platforms are going to be ticked.

If you can play ALL formats on linux, it's probably because you're using some dlls copied from linux. They only work on the architecture they were compiled on (and for dlls from windows, that means x86).

Yes but you are not all linux users... trust me, some gentoo/LFS guys and ppl running linux on PPC, SPARC and other platforms are going to be ticked.

If you can play ALL formats on linux, it's probably because you're using some dlls copied from linux. They only work on the architecture they were compiled on (and for dlls from windows, that means x86).

Those people you mentioned are going to have a video player installed if they plan on watching videos anyway, correct? Well there are very few nix media players out there now that don't play WMV right out of the box.

Michael: you're right... assuming they can get a pre-compiled nix media player for their distro. Not always possible.

Real Media ;)

I choice is of course .MOV (or .MP4), video encoded in Sorenson Video 3 or H.264 (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/technologies/h264/).

I think wmv, since everybody use Windows :)
Ha.

I am a Mac user. The support of WMP for Mac is poor, (Microsoft even admitted it)

None of them are good because if you are trying to make a video delivery on website, remember many people dont have quicktime installed but most of people have windows media player installed but not on linux.

After all, only solution which came up was Flash Video format, but problem with FLV is, you can not play it locally and you cannot forward it as email, but yes through website delivery its the best.

Why would you want a large video forwarded to an e-mail box to begin with? The user should have a choice in the end. Offering a quick way to watch the video without breaking your servers back or the users back, would be FLV hands down. For home viewing pleasure, I personally love the IPOD video format. If the video is really interesting and worth it, then I put it on my video ipod so that I can watch it whenever I want. Viewing it in iTunes is pretty good as well. The other format I would consider would be Quicktime as .mov or .mpeg files can also be viewed with Real Player, saved to memory stick for PSP users and the like. I personally think windows format is a pain. I never touch those files personally as I use mac/pc and just don't like the fact that it's so limited with viewing through other means.

What video format is ESPN using? The first time I went to ESPN's site when they started doing videos, some years ago, it asked me to download something. I'm actually not sure, maybe it did. Anyway, it looks like Flash video. Anyone know?

Out of those choices .mov but my favorite would be streaming flash files or FLV. Extremely easy to convert a large avi/mov/etc into a tiny flash file that can be streamed with great quality.
I have always used wmv. but I think I will look into the flash idea. I think it is cooler.

for embedded video on a website, flv (flash video). For distribution, avi/xvid.

.avi is just a container for a video and is not codec specific..it could be xvid, divx, wmv, or any number of encoding format...then you need the codec installed on the client side to play it even if it is embedded in a webpage...

I don't think .avi should be a choice in this poll since it really is not a codec at all..

.flv's are great but do not scale well due to a number of reasons that is too long to talk about (becomes pixalated when larger then orginal size) and even with the beta version of flash player 9 it does not stretch the video to the user moniter size correctly without some internal coding and doesn't go full screen on ie7 yet on my last test..

I use wmv with windows media services..

Usually my encodes are comparable to divx....though flv's will look better after the encoding with vp6 two pass the file size but is actually larger then the wmv files with the same cbr at 700kbps for a hour long video that was orginally 700mb...wmv i usually get around 280-320mb...flv i get around 480-520

But the best format I have to say is h.264 at apple...ipod and .mov are usually encoded with this format and for the compression vs. speed vs. quality this is the best codec around (google it and you'll see why) but embedding in webpages it's not good unless you don't need a full screen option...you can use the free darwin streaming server to stream .mov files over ip

But if you want to use flv files use the fms2 from adobe..the free developers version has now become availible for commerical use..no bandwidth limitations but only 10 connects allowed..

If you want to do true streaming then the real media streaming server is pretty what you want since it can do true streaming for about 50 different codecs...they have a limited free version but only applies to there rm format which isn't too bad at all..

VLC is a free streaming format that can stream alot of formats but it is buggy and during my test I was only able to transcode the files on the fly which means you can't seek which is basically to me the same as progressive downloads but you are able to stream in a webpage and you can stream xvid and transcode at a lower bitrate then orginal content which was really nice to see..also can overlay logo's on the fly which I have yet to see any free streaming server due...you can input video ad..input text message...and alot of other stuff....I'm still working on this and the source is open so hopefully I can work the bugs for my use...

wmv format would be better.

I come from a motion picture background. It's .mov for best quality over all those, hands down. The two most popular film editing software packages also save to .mov files natively but none of those mentioned.