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When choosing the best video format for the web, the underlying question, from a media content provider's point of view, is not related to quality of the format as much as the universal accessibility of its intended route. An audience's experience matters more than anything else.

Many video file formats can be used with a variety of codecs, so choosing a format and choosing a codec are often separate steps. For Web delivery, many combinations of player, codec, and format are possible. Currently in the video/web marketplace, there are only four major competitors seeking your content: Flash, Windows Media, QuickTime, and Real Media.

This is the modern format of choice because it's the most universal. Flash reaches the greatest proportion of computer users with its distribution. Flash brings unmatched ease of use, and the player technology is essentially invisible to the user. Flash has a digital rights management (DRM) component within Flash Media Server 3, and now gives users the ability to download videos to their desktops with the Adobe Media Player (http://labs.adobe.com).

Windows Media offers a mainstream solution for streaming at all bandwidths. The Windows Media 9 codec plays on WM Player 7 or later. The latest Windows Media (version 11) has the excellent VC-1 codec at HD (16:9) quality. Compatibility has improved greatly since the introduction of "Silverlight," a browser plug-in which is now available to all users on alternative operating systems or browsers. Windows Media supports full DRM capability through Windows Media DRM services.

Real Video requires software from Real Networks to run in Mac or PC browsers. Real Video can be a fair choice for streaming at all bitrates.

QuickTime is a container format, which means you can use several different codecs for compressing the video (e.g., H.264, DV/DVCPro, etc.). QuickTime is a solid solution for streaming at all bitrates. The Quick- Time player has wide, but not universal, distribution. H.264 is the native format for video on the iPod and Apple TV. QuickTime supports DRM through Apple's iTunes Music Store.

There are a wide variety of tools for encoding video. Each encoding tool's codec implementation is slightly different. Encoding performance and image quality will vary depending on which tools are being used, frame rates, and types of content. You should always encode from the highest-quality video source, such as an uncompressed .DV, .MOV, .MPEG2 at 6-10 Mbs, or .AVI file. Do not use compressed video because it contains visual artifacts. Encoding from a compressed video will produce a poor quality output. If your source is analog videotape, use original masters and encode to a high-quality digital format first. Then transcode to the video formats you'll deliver on the Web. Grass Valley ProCoder 3 is the encoding tool of choice for me and will be the tool we'll focus on for these examples.

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