DV Source - Recommended format for web streaming?

[tarrickb]

Hello all.

I have quite a bit of DV footage that I'm interested in publishing to the web. I've played around a bit, and have had some success with DV to FLV conversion using RIVA encoder. However, I haven't been very impressed with the size/quality of the resulting file, so I was wondering if anyone else had any suggestions as to which format they think is best for streaming over the web. I'm somewhat new to MP4, but understand that H264 is a possibility?

Can anyone help with this?
Thanks.

TB.

[Baldrick]

The mp4 container is not that useful for web streaming because it wont work directly in the web browser and the user must probably install a new video player/codec. But you can try make a mp4 with h264 using for example xvid4psp.

Latest version of flash supports also h264 but I don't know any converter that supports it yet. I would try flash professional builtin flash converter or on2 flix flash converter if you want flash / flv video.

Or make a quicktime mov(it also supports h264 video) using mpeg streamclip or quicktime pro.

[tarrickb]

Thank you for your suggestions. I ended up using On2 Flix FLV converter and notice a BIG difference compared to RIVA's free encoder. I guess you get what you pay for!

A note for others, when encoding FLV, try as best as possible to feed it progressive source video. Asking the FLV encoder to de-interlace the video results in much lower quality compared to if you do it yourself first (I suggest a de-interlacing filter in VirtualDub).