What's best output for movies that would be downloadable

Doug2006 · Post by **Doug2006** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 12:09 am

If some people on the forum could chime in with their opinions on what would be the best output file for movies that people could down load from the internet. I have some instructional videos that are about 2hours long. I would like to make them available for electronic download. There is hardly any motion in them and they don't have to be super quality, good enough so people can see what I am doing.
I have thought of divx and I see with their software you can put in titles and chapters, a whole menu, which would be nice. But the file size for two hours still seems large.
If any one has an opinion on what is too large for use on the internet I would like to hear that too.
Is windows media format still a reasonable way to go? Thanks Doug

Clevo · Post by **Clevo** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 12:23 am

My opinion:

Break up that 2 hour video into something more managable. The prospect of downloading a 2 hour video would put off people who might be interested and with breaking it up you wouldn;t have to compromise too much on the bit rate (quality)

As for formats you will have to consider your target audience needs but allow for, minimum, windows and mac users.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Tue Apr 08, 2008 12:51 am

The most popular formats for sharing videos online are
DivX
Xvid
MPEG4

These provide some of the smallest available file sizes but retain high quality. Typically a 1 hour video will have a file size of 700MB.
Other formats to be considered are
WMV
Flash
Quicktime.