Xvid & DivX>RM>MPG
That's the way I see it. Xvid is the best solution for LOCAL upload I'd say, but if you want to have different versions of your video rm is a good way.
A 900kb/s .rm pawns 1300kb/s .mpg. I'm quite assured in that. A 900 kb/s rm preserves the quality very accurately without
many pixelisation or ghosting while .mpg on 1300 has a huge ammount (I haven't seen a .mpg video under 1600 that was flawless in quality). A 500 kb/s rm can also be reeeally good. When it's up to low bitrate encodes it all depends upon the viewers comp. configuration. Sounds strange ain't it? Well, it isn't if you think about it. The better processor, RAM memory, graphic card....the more sharper and clearer the picture will be. That is if "Allow Hardware Acceleration" is checked. I'm still uncertain how does that work, but it works and that's important.
While I was converting my latest video (you have the link in the sig if you wanna check it, rm format
) I noticed that if you encode from your Huffy version to rm in 640X480, 29.97 FPS, 1300 kb/s the quality is near flawless
. On top of that if you have a good comp. config. it looks just as good as if I'm watching a show through my DVD player. Really foeckin' sweet. That version looked much better than my .mpg on 1300 and 1300 Xvid to. I followed all the possible guides for Xvid encoding and I don't think I was wrong anywhere while encoding through 2 pass. The .rm still looked better. Xvid was pretty good to and could've been easily used like a final version, but since my modem sux I didn't upload a Xvid version, but a LQ rm version, which still has it's own good & bad sides though. The peps. that saw it on a good comp. configuration and had "Hardware Acceleration on" had the quality very crystal while some others thought it was an ok compression, but needed to be more crisp.
What I suggest is that you make a HQ Xvid version on LOCAL and represent only your best encode with it while the other
much smaller version can be rm (500 kb/s).
.mpg is viewable by everyone therefore it has it's own advantages. Ignorant watchers won't have to dld anything and can use every player they want with it.
.rm is a great way to reach good quality picture with extremely low bitrates. Try making a 450kb/s version for all formats. You'll see that only .rm would be satisfying. While more faster modems weren't in such a use in the past .rm was a best way to preserve bandwidth for the servers and the filesize was satisfying for everyone. Nowadays more users have faster modems and therefore the bigger filesizes are quite reachable. Hell, even I with my dial-up took some time and dlded the 80MB videos
. It's biggest bug is that it's format only works with RealPlayer (there aren't others I've encountered so far) and therefore lazyness of the viewers does it
.
Xvid with DivX compatibility is the best way though. You get great very crisp quality (on higher bitrates looks flawless). And a huge number of computer users has to have it installed, therefore 80% (at least) of the watchers won't have any problems
.
Whoever thinks that .rm isn't good for distribution is right in many ways. However, if the jerks from Real would make the format compatible for WMP or some other frequently used player I think it's use would have risen very very high. Really high bitrate rm compressions look very awesome, but as I said before dlding a new program is a big problem for some people. You stick with Xvid and everything is fine. I recommend you experiment with the rm quality settings on higher bitrates and you'll see what are the benefits of it
. Of course there are options you need to take care of like FPS, resolution and chosing "2 Pass" & "Variable bitrate" in "Preferences" window. Try them all.
), so there is Real Alternate. Just do a google and it is free. Even though I preffer .rm format, I still don't mind the convetinal .avi or .mpg. So it is just a thought to save server space, and time uploading. Please tell me what you think.
Real Player 
