mpeg,divx,avi,asf?
 

I'm thinking of giving away one 3meg clip on my site, but what format should I use?

mpeg is the easiest to play and less hassle for the visitor, Divx? is just a type of clip not an actual clip, also the easiest to hack down to 3mb and keep somewhat good quality

DivX is fantastic. Basically, you could take a DVD, rip it to CD, and have <i>near</i> DVD quality sound and vision on a single CD. But that requires a divX codec to be installed on the user's machine. The most simple for a surfer is definetley mpeg.

How much does quality matter? If you don't mind choppy, grainy video, Windows Media is actually very good compression. If you want broadest acceptance, go with a nice simple MPG. For the best of both worlds, I'd go with QT .mov or .MP4...

A recent review in pcmag I believe ranked QT behind windows media player format in quality

for quality vs file size, qt rules. we use mpeg1 for the reasons stated above.

DiVX all the way -- 3.11 that is :)

More depends on the type of encoding software you use than anything else really.

You get wildly different qualities in wmv, asf, even mpeg depending on the software you use.

Kind of like the fact that you can make graphics with MSPaint or you can make graphics with Photoshop...

:thumbsup Not everyone wants to bother with downloading divx. Mpeg is more common among the average user. For some help and comparisons check out www.vcdhelp.com

if you use cleaner 5, you will get good results with AVI, MP3, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WAV, AIFF, PICT, JPEG, PNG, BMP, QuickTime, RealVideo and Windows Media files.

if you are really interested in MPEG-1, you should also invest in the mpeg supercharger plugin for cleaner.

mpeg, avi, divx.

how much market share does windows media player have?

the format, or just the player?

the player

I strongly suggest you to go with MPEG for the tour or windows media 7.

90% of the people don't run DIVX and they will not take the time to download it. QT and Real are great but don't reach enough people. I have done some test with windows codec 8 and I got a lot of surfer asking wich program I was using since they were not able to see it... maybe 2-3% of the surfer.

Will stick with mpeg 1 for tour until windows media player read true mpeg 4.

i use avi mainly because i can't get anywhere near the same quality with mpegs.

If you're traffic is coming from MGP sites, then go for DiVX -- most MGP surfers are smart enough to have DiVX installed...