Web encoding & playback format recommendations ?

[PowerFalcon]

What is the best top three video formats to encode for the web and the encoder to do it ? I'm looking for low file size, high quality wrapped up into one compression.

[Cornucopia]

x.264's rendition of h.264, with whichever (freeware) gui you prefer. And AAC audio. Below that, Flash's FLV (using h.264 or VP8 compression) from Adobe's encoder, and then WMV9 from Windows Media Encoder.

I would have included WebM, but it's not yet that universal.

(This is assuming that high compression/low filesize, high quality, universality, and encoder ease of use and decent user features)

Scott

[edDV]

What is the best top three video formats to encode for the web and the encoder to do it ? I'm looking for low file size, high quality wrapped up into one compression.

Also it would help to describe the user/viewer profile and type of equipment they would be using.

e.g. Windows PC, Mac, Unix, tablet, iPad, cellphone, media player?

Do you have control of the user environment? e.g. an employee?

[PowerFalcon]

Windows, and yes I have control over the environment.

[edDV]

Windows, and yes I have control over the environment.

OK, now describe the type of video content. For example

- hand held interlace camcorder?
- graphics intensive e.g. training?
- movie/tv recordings?

When you say high quality, for what kind of display?

When you say small file, how small?

How would you distribute? Your own server or Youtube/Vimeo/Justin/etc?

Typical codecs would be flash, h.264 progressive, wmv/vc-1 variations.

[PowerFalcon]

Windows, and yes I have control over the environment.

OK, now describe the type of video content. For example

- hand held interlace camcorder?
- graphics intensive e.g. training?
- movie/tv recordings?

When you say high quality, for what kind of display?

When you say small file, how small?

How would you distribute? Your own server or Youtube/Vimeo/Justin/etc?

Typical codecs would be flash, h.264 progressive, wmv/vc-1 variations.

You answered the codecs question so did Cornucopia.

[PowerFalcon]

Cornucopia what do you mean by this:

x.264's rendition of h.264, with whichever (freeware) gui you prefer

What x.264 renditions are there ?

[Cornucopia]

x.264 is ONE rendition of the h.264 codec spec. Mainconcept (which licenses to Adobe & many others), Quicktime, DivX h.264, CoreAVC and MediaFoundation (some others) also have their own renditions of the same spec. The spec is a REFERENCE MODEL that these different version attempt to conform to, but with each using thier own algorithms to (hopefully) arrive at the same destination.

Scott

edit: to be clear, there is only ONE x.264, but it keeps improving with newer version #s...

[Selur]

to be more clear: there is no x.264, it's named x264

[PowerFalcon]

Thank you, I understand now.

[PowerFalcon]

What do you recommend between the following. Unless you can recommend one not listed.

Badaboom 2.0
CoreAVC
D-Vision 4.0 alpha 8
HandBrake 0.9.5