Best video format and size to use to put on a webiste

[neuz]

I have a website that I have created and I was wanting to put some videos on the site. The videos(they are not movies or anything, they are videos I have shot from years ago that are only on dvd) are about an hour or longer. I am wondering what the best format to use( avi, wmv, mpeg4, etc) and what the best size is. I would like the best quality with the largest screen size and the smallest file size. I know that's asking alot. When I created them as an mpeg4 they are 512x384. The quality is good but the size of the video is over a gig. Also the picture that appears is a little to small. Any suggestions?

I have purchased a program call AOA ripper that allows me to select different kinds of file type and change the size but I am just not sure what would give me the best quality, largest screen size and the smallest file size.

Again, I know I am asking alot by wanting all three.

Thanks for your help.

[jagabo]

Best for what? Streaming? Download? Easily viewable by anyone?

[neuz]

Sorry for the lack of information. I would like people to be able to just click on it and view it. If they want to right-click and download that would be fine but my main intention is to have them to click on it and view them.
Thanks,
Neuz

[jagabo]

You will need to use a streaming server then. And you'll probably want to use h.264/aac in FLV or MP4 (like Youtube) for wide compatibility. The other possibility is WMV3 and WMA in a WMV/ASF container. But h.264 compresses better.

[neuz]

Jagabo,
Thanks for the reply.
I'm new to this so I am not sure what h.264/acc is. Also how do I convert to that? When I did rip the files as an mp4 it was 1.2gig. I liked the look but the file size was a little to big.
Thanks again,
Neuz

[filmboss80]

Since you are new to all of this, let's make things as simple as possible. Put your DVDs on the hard drive, then cut each long movie down to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, etc., avoiding going over 15 minutes per segment. You can use a free tool like Mpg2Cut2 to make the segments. Honestly, there are lots of reasons to avoid overly long web videos, so please make things efficient for your viewers.

After segmenting your movies, use a free, one-click tool like WinFF to make your conversions, either selecting the H.264 High Quality setting (.mp4) or the Flash Video for Web Use setting (.flv) The choice of 4:3 or 16:9 must be based on your source video's aspect ratio. WinFF has all the necessary string commands to do the conversions.

Make sure your web hosting service will handle the video files on their servers.

See how that works for you.