Best format to conver to for web?

[silver007]

Ok I think my question is so general, I can't find any clear answers, or even opinions on it.

My wife's Panasonic camera uses that aweful .mov format for video. Currently, I'm converting them to Xvid which is decreasing the size by anywhere from 50-70% and still maintaining good quality. I just got to wondering if this is the best quality per byte I can get? I saw a couple articles where people were criticizing avi as a web video format, but frankly I don't see the big deal. Of course I have to direct people to download the Xvid codec but that's a one-time thing I'm sure they can handle (these are family videos on a personal website).

I have RAD Video Tools and am converting using the Xvid codec, quality setting 2.00, which seems to be as low as I can go and not have banding.

Thanks.

[Baldrick]

Xvid is good but mp4 with h264 video and aac audio might be even better if you want a low file size. It's also supported by flash so you can easily add it to sites with a flash player. Convert using avidemux or xvid4psp, see https://forum.videohelp.com/topic355179.html

[silver007]

Ugh... I think I'll stick with Xvid if you know of no problems. That flash stuff will hardly play on my ol' PIII and it's a two-click process for Xvid avi's.

[DJRumpy]

You can also check out MEGUI or Handbrake for MP4/AAC encoding. XviD is starting to show it's age a bit. It can easily encode at 30-50 percent of the bitrate used by XviD and retain similar quality.

I agree with Baldrick. Pick a newer codec like MP4/H.264. The come with a plethora of low end profiles for older hardware, including mobile devices, and streaming content for web playback. It's also easily converted to flash, which is quickly becoming the defacto standard for web video these days.

[silver007]

Snatching Handbrake now. MEGUI scares me with it's .net requirement.

Thanks for the info.

[silver007]

Well hell. Handbrake loooooves Microsoft too. Oh well.

[DJRumpy]

No idea what the Windows requirements are. I'm on a Mac You could always install Linux if you don't want to use the Windows version.