Tag Archives: MP4

File Formats When streaming videos over the Internet you must decide to encode your videos in either MP4 or FLV formats. Most servers and players support both file formats. I personally recommend using MP4 because you get DVD quality videos at a much smaller file size. It also uses less CPU on client machines and it works on mobile phones. The downside to MP4 is that the videos will take longer to load than an FLV video. FFMPEG is a great free and very powerful encoder, but can be somewhat difficult to learn. It supports many popular video formats and has many options to configure. Bitrate is probably the most important factor in determining the quality and file size of your video. If your video contains lots of action and motion it will need to have a higher bitrate. Youtube encodes their normal videos at a bitrate of 200kbps and their high quality videos at 900kbps. Be wise in picking a bitrate because the higher it is the more likely users will experience streaming problems.