Distribution Formats 101

What is the Best Video Format for Distribution?

This question gets asked a LOT. The answer is generally "Whatever is best for you" - but that doesn't really help you much if you don't know the pros/cons of one format over another.

This page is a quick and dirty look at what's what and what's worthwhile.

Format
 Quality
 Ease of Playback
 User Acceptance
Mpeg-1
 Low/Medium
 Very easy. Anyone with a pentium
processor can play these files.
 Well accepted
universal format.
DivX/XviD
High
 Easy. Depending on the frame
size and options these can be played
on most 400+Mhz systems with a
good media player.
 Well accepted,
particularly amongst
anime fandom as it
is the standard for digisubs.
Windows
Media 9
 V. High
(when encoded
correctly)
 Reasonably easy. Anyone with the
misfortune of using a recent version
of Windows Media Player will be fine.
Others will need the codec.
 Medium. WMV is often
associated with low
quality due to bad or small
encodes.
Real
Video
10
 Highest for
Anime
(currently)
 Medium ease. RealPlayer is freely
available but not a great player. Real
Alternative is available but sloppy.
 Low. Real Video gets a
bad rap - mostly for a history
of invasive low-quality players.
Visual
Potion
6
V. High
 Easy with a codec install.
Similar to divx in ease.
 Very little user knowledge
of codec may lead to
complaints.
h.264
 High
(V.High in
future)
 Hard currently. Not massively
supported and current players have
some issues.
 Almost totally unknown
but this will be the next big
thing.

Deciding which one to use really depends on what your priorities are. In this guide we've give priority to the codecs that have the greatest user acceptance which means that so far we have guides on mpeg1 and xvid encoding. Alternative options are to follow.

What is the Best Audio Format for distribution?

This question doesn't get asked as much, simply because MP3 is such a standard and people have less problems with audio quality. This table is here mainly for completeness.

Format
 		Quality
 		Ease of Playback
 		User Acceptance
MP3
 Good
 Very very easy.
 Very high,
especially at high
bitrates.
Ogg
 V Good
 Quite easy with codec
install. Hard to mux to
avi however.
 Medium. It is
accepted for music files
but less for muxing
in video.
AC3
 V Good
 Reasonable ease. Some
DVD player software
can complicate installs
 Medium. It is not very
common for stereo
files.
AAC
  V High
 Medium ease although
the list of possible
playback methods is high.
 Low. Not much exposure
for videos yet
although accepted
in real video encodes.
WMA 9
 High
 Same is wmv.
 Same as wmv.

There are the essential codecs. There are others (including lossless codecs) but compatibility with video playback varies a lot. Some of the above formats are limited to certain video containers. This will be explained once the alternative encoding options are written. For now you have the choice of mp3 or nothing... but that's no bad thing - when it comes to making small online distributions of videos the difference between a 224kbps mp3 stream and a more efficient codec is small enough to not have to care about the space saved... just choose mp3 because it is universally supported.

AbsoluteDestiny - September 2004