Universally Playable Video for Website

[ks47]

I just published my first website with a video clip; this works fine on my computer running XP OS and 1GB of RAM and a DSL connection. On the other hand, the same DSL connection to a computer with ME OS 256MB RAM stutters. Furthermore, I had my assistant checking on dialup connection; she reports no video is visible. The video is 47 seconds long that is coded with FLV extension.

Here’s my question for those who have experience in publishing video on the website. What is the most compatible and/or universally playable format for the general population as this is a business website? Additional thought…I don’t want a format which requires plug-ins or cannot play with dialup connection because it sort of defeats universality or compatibility issue. Thanks.

TS

[redwudz]

WMV is on most computers already. MPEG-1 is also on most.

[thecoalman]

or cannot play with dialup connection because it sort of defeats universality or compatibility issue.

This has nothing to do with compatibility, the reason you can't see it is because it's buffering. A dial up connection is only 56kbps at the very most, it's hard enough getting audio only under that without degrading the quality quite a bit.

To get it somewhat near 56k speeds reduce the resolution to about 300x200, drop the framerate to 10fps, use 35-40kbps for the video and 20kbps mono for the audio.

[ks47]

This has nothing to do with compatibility, the reason you can't see it is because it's buffering

Thanks for the replies. I am totally aware those facts. I had a diaup connection until several years ago. It's no big secret; 56kbs is only a theoretical max. connection. I never reached that ever. That said the above idea of MPEG-1 is worth pursuing, even though a web camera that I had with those format, looked crappy. But then sacrificing video quality for universality is a trade off , I guess, I need to make...Isn't it like a real life, you can never have a cake and eat it, too. Oh! Well, thanks for the inputs.

TS

[thecoalman]

That said the above idea of MPEG-1 is worth pursuing, even though a web camera that I had with those format, looked crappy. But then sacrificing video quality for universality is a trade off , I guess, I need to make...Is

MPEG1 is perfectly capable of creating quality comparable to WMV or other compressed formats, the tradeoff is the bitrate required. It needs about 4x the bitrate of WMV or other similar codecs to produce the same quality video. It's not going to solve any problems as far as making it dial-up friendly and will actually make them worse. It is however the most universal video format you could use and will play on just about any platform.