Best video formats for members areas
 

It's 2011, what are the "best" members area formats to offer?

I've seen people doing .wmv, .avi, .flv, .mp4, .mov, etc.

Obviously I think a few options are good, but when there are a dozen different formats offered it seems like a bit much... or is that truly the best route?

If you had to offer only, say 3 different formats/file sizes, what would they be?

Bump for a business thread.
From what I've read here before most are streaming .flv and offering downloads of .wmv and others.

streaming flv
downloadable wmv, mp4

By default the Elevated X CMS comes setup to automatically transcode/convert a source video into the following formats. This has worked extremely well for all our customers thus far.

Full length Movies and 1 Minute Clips for each speed/format:

WMV High/Low
FLV High/Low
MPG High/Low
MOV High/Low
DiVX AVI High/Low
MPG H.264 High (iPad)
MP4 High/Low (320 pixels Mobile)
MP4 High/Low (160 pixels Mobile)
3GP High/Low (352 pixels Mobile)
3GP High/Low (160 pixels Mobile)

From this list most people will choose a few of the formats they prefer and remove the rest.

To reach a wide audience I'd recommend offering WMV, FLV, MP4, 3GP, H.264 MP4 and if you want to offer a universal "safe" format you can also go with good old MPG

The Flash FLV is obviously embedded and I would go with a streaming solution like Wowza. For the other formats you can offer download and/or embedded viewing depending on your preferences and whether downloading or piracy are a concern.

AJ

All our sites have:

Streaming FLV
Streaming WMV with an embedded WMV player
Downloadable WMV

Great info here