Rendering video files anyone can view

Opticus wrote on 6/14/2014, 2:56 PM

Simple question: Is there a file format I can use to render video files that people can easily download from my server and view on any relatively recent Windows or Mac computer? For this project I am not interested in tablets and phones.

I recently rendered some .WMV video files in Vegas for people to download off a link from my server. Some users had no problem downloading or viewing the files on their Windows computers, but for others the files open as a long string of letters and numbers. Mac users could not view them at all.

Only other solutions I can think of is to create a webpage with the video embedded in the page, or post the video someplace like Vimeo.

Thanks!
Cal

Comments

John_Cline wrote on 6/14/2014, 4:40 PM

MP4 is pretty universal at this point, works on both PCs and MACs. Windows XP users may have issues playing them in Media Player as it did not originally have native support for the MP4 format. If you really want to cover all the bases, then MPEG1 files (not MPEG2) will play on virtually anything.

musicvid10 wrote on 6/14/2014, 4:49 PM

+1 for MP4.

Some of the oldest MPEG-1 won't play in newer Windows, I think due to quartz.dll

NormanPCN wrote on 6/14/2014, 4:49 PM

I would go with AVC video and AAC audio, which is the most common contents of MP4 files. Sony AVC and Mainconcept AVC in Vegas generate these files. This is also what Youtube/Vimeo/etc all use.

With AVC/H.264 video you can get the best visual quality for a given bitrate (aka file size) from the various common video codecs available across platforms.

Former user wrote on 6/14/2014, 4:52 PM

MP4

Opticus wrote on 6/14/2014, 4:55 PM

Thanks everyone, I will use MP4. -- Cal