What is the most "playable" format?

[deroberts100]

When making video+audio available to others, who have probably got PCs, but may have Macs, and may have Win98, win2k or winxp (and anything in between, including SPs), what format gives the most playability (ie ability to play on any PC without installing additional software) - probably on just basic windows media player, and a decent size of video.

I guess uncompressed AVI is most playable, but it is BIG.
I guess the solution is some variant of MPEG1, but exactly what format?

Sorry if this is answered by any FAQs, but I did look and couldnt find anything.

[BJ_M]

quicktime is pretty universal , as is mpeg1

[bfarnham]

I went through a testing process last year burning about 20 CD's in all different formats and found that MPEG1 was by far most compatible with all types of PC's. From old 486's to high-end Pentium computers, with all OS's from Windows 3.1 through XP! I was searching for the same results as you...playability without any additional software. I tried numerous formats including converting the video to Flash, Quicktime, MPEG, various compression schemes, bit-rates, etc. My suggestion is to use MPEG without any of the compression schemes (like Indeo) as they only seemed to impact performance without much savings in file space.

There is plenty of help on this site about doing autorun.inf files to make the video start automatically on insertion of the CD. Of course, this won't work on the Macs, but they can just click on the MPG file.

Also, if you have Roxio EZCD Creator, check out the video postcard application. I ended up using this with a Christmas video of our family for the past two years.

[deroberts100]

The standard MPEG1 format is still about 10 times bigger than WMV though, which is a bit annoying.

Surely, if most people have Windows Media Player on their PCs then a WMV format should be very "playable", and gives excellent compression.

[BJ_M]

The standard MPEG1 format is still about 10 times bigger than WMV though, which is a bit annoying.

Surely, if most people have Windows Media Player on their PCs then a WMV format should be very "playable", and gives excellent compression.

not everyone runs windows ...

[vitualis]

You will be hard pressed to find a PC that someone still regularly uses that can't play MPEG-1. On the Wintel scene, standard MPEG-1 support has been there since Windows 3.1. MPEG-1 will also play without additional software on Macs, Linux machines, etc.

WMV support is far from universal. Not everyone uses Windows and realistically, only the newer versions of Windows support it out of the box. I'm pretty sure your standard Win98 and Windows NT4 "out of the box" cannot play WMV and there are a lot of PCs still using those OSes out there.

Regards.

[Nelson37]

I have investigated same issue.

MPEG1 most compatible PC format. Stay with VCD settings and almost all DVD player will handle it as well. Higher bitrates and resolution will still play on PC and high percentage of DVD standalone.

MPEG2 requires software on many PC, also eliminates 20-40% of standalone DVD. There are some software players, freeware, which may play directly off the CD with no install (haven't tested this thoroughly yet), but this does not help DVD compatibility.

Many variations of autorun, some will handle most all windows versions, there is even a mouseable menu creator that looks fairly simple, I think it was called AutoMake.

If target is PC only, de-interlaced 720x480 Mpeg-1 at whatever bitrate gives good output. If DVD standalone also desired, standard VCD with smoothing filters is probably best bet.

IF you can find a good player which plays from the CD with NO installation required, AND losing some DVD standalone not a problem, AND VCD quality not high enough, THEN an MPEG-2, either SVCD or above, is a good bet. TELL US ABOUT THE PLAYER IF YOU FIND ONE!

[Gazorgan]

Quicktime is NOT universally compatable, especially if you play around with better codecs.

MPEG-1 is about as universal is at it gets. You are looking at roughly 1 CD/hour of video. So either make small clips, or re-evlauate what you want to do. You didn't give the source, or the reason for the distribution; these factors will determine your decision more than anything. Don't rule out RM, especially if you have major bandwidth conbstraints. It's always a quality vs size vs compatability matrix (3-dimensional problem)

[JamesB69]

Hate to break your heart but MPEG-2 requires a faster computer, as our 550mhz k62 pc struggles with it. Almost all computers, especially cheaper ones sold in 1999 or before and many from 2000 (and possibly 2001) will have slow playback of mpeg-2. You could lower the resolution and bitrate to help this but then you lower the quality so why not just stick with mpeg1.

On another note RealMedia has never fared well with my computer. The player never works right and the media doesnt usually play correctly.