Online Video: Codecs, Encoding and Compression

At a recent get-together of the Digital Cinema Society, at post facility IVC in Burbank, director/editor/inventor Philip Hodgetts presented a session on Internet video and what everyone needs to know to get the best quality.

The take-away?

• Use MPEG-4 H.264 video and AAC Audio in .m4 or .m4v containers.
• Stay 23.98 throughout and never add pulldown.
• De-interlace because all web video is progressive – and don’t blend to de-interlace
• Start with an Apple-compatible preset for iPod/iPhone/Apple TV

Working with these problems daily, it’s become obvious to me that many experts in the field still have difficulties separating the details of containers and codecs, and detailing the effects of all the various options that change between every pairing.

via Studio Daily Blog » Online Video: Codecs, Encoding and Compression.

This story written by Randall Hand

Randall Hand is a visualization scientist working for a federal research lab, aiding researchers to discover the insights buried within their terabyte datasets generated on some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. He also runs VizWorld.com .