Which is the safest format

For online educational videos

[hanuman]

All;

We are planning on putting on our website short 3-5 minutes educational videos. We are using be Adobe Premier to create the movies. I am looking for advise on which output setting and format we should use?

presuming our users will have various OS, resolutions and speeds...

Thank you in advance
Hanuman

[blackhole]

I donīt know nothing about Adobe Premier, but as in Photoshop, there must be a section for these output settings I think...

[hanuman]

Thanks, my question is, regardless to the software used to create the movie, which will be the most used format? mpeg? avi? quick time?

what resolutions do you suggest, any leads?

[Jon_King]

Mpeg is by far the most popular format for your type of application although according to this review QT is the overall most downloaded for movie trailers making it technically the largest.

[extremetech.com...]

Be sure to go far enough into the article in order to view the 'ratings'.

Jon

[Macro]

MPEG is of course the safest format. Well, MPEG2 anyway. Whether using Premiere 6.5 or the newer Premiere Pro you can export the clip to MPEG. Many older Windows PCs - and newer ones for that matter - won't automatically have QT. Users may or may not be savvy enough to download and install it. Also, in some cases - like publicly used PCs or school PCs - they may not be allowed to.

[hanuman]

Thank you Macro! Any advice on the settings? I seem to get lost with most of the terms that are new for me.

MPEG Stream?
Which Bitrates to choose and which type?
Frame size?
GOP Structure?
Multiplexer Settings?

I am lost.... any help would be very much appreciated!

[Macro]

hanuman, if you are using a program like Premiere you would really be doing yourself a favour by learning a bit about it. There are various courses, online tutorials, CDs you can buy, books, and specialist forums. Someone else giving you a list of settings - without context - doesn't really help. If it's just a one off job and you won't ever need to do it again then give it to someone to do for you.

Also, if it's just format conversion there are several good programs that specialise in format conversion, like Canopus Procoder. They may be worth checking out as well. There are usually lite versions of these programs. I believe Procoder 2.0 comes in Full, Lite and Extra Lite (I don't know their exact names)

[MrCrowley]

Hi,

As other users pointed out, mpg is the safest format, but it is not streaming.

Quicktime is not widespread... despite what apple say, their software is not present on most of the machines. And their 'Update later' popup each time you start it is so annoying...

You could use wmv, which is windows native format, but can be read by most macs as well. This format can stream. There is a menu in premiere to save in this format (i think it is 'save for web', but I'm not sure I don't have Premiere on this machine). When I put a video online, I use wmv, since it is a format that is better suited for the web. You could put it in two 'bandwidth' versions: 56k and high speed. There are presets for that.

For more info, search for windows media encoder utilities.