What is the best video format to use for posting videos on the internet?

Question

I'm just starting to take video off of my video camera[canon elura 100] and putting it on my computer. I made one 17 minute video but its a 700mb file. I need to make it smaller than that. What is the best type of video format to use or how can I compress this video to make it smaller? Ideally, I'd like to make them small enough so I can post them on the internet for my friends to watch them or putting them on youtube or something.

Answer 1

I like Quicktime. Convert your video to Quicktime if it's not already. Since you've already rendered it into a movie/video go ahead and purchase Quicktime Pro (about $49.95 one time fee) and export your video files using different compressions, etc. Or another Conversion Software that is free is "MPEG Streamclip." Do a Google search for the website. Your file is very large (700MB) for a 17 minute video. You can export it into MP4 (mpeg4) format. YouTube accepts that universal file extension for the web. However, with the mp4 video format, use the H.264 compression (codec) and there are a few other things you need to set, like the bitrate, streaming or downloading, other video settings, audio settings (to decrease your file size even more you can change your stereo audio to "mono" among other things. After you upload your video to video sites on the web they process by compressing it even more into FLV format (flash video) and depending on their compression level, that beautiful video you uploaded can look like "crap" once they show it on the web. I'm putting together some screencast videos to teach people things like this, very soon. You might be able to find some info on what to do by searching the web.

Answer 2

First of all, you can probably re-render your video without spending a buck. I've found that WMV and .MOV files work best, with the right settings of course. With windows media, the easiest thing is to probably import into windows movie maker and then render. The export screen will have lots of options, and they will be understandable (such as video for LAN, broadband, etc.). I usually use presets within Premiere pro, so I can't give a detailed explanation for the settings in another editing program. As for quicktime files, your editor should be able to render them once you've downloaded quicktime player (just regular is fine). Mpeg-4 and H.264 are good web codecs, and I usually set the quality to 60 or 70%, and it looks fine, and the files are fairly small as well (30-60mb for a 5 minute video, although settings can be adjusted for your 17 minute video). Hope this helps!

Answer 3

QuickTime is better quality, but takes longer to load and takes up more space.

AVI is smaller but not as good quality, but it is something.