Best format of video on websites?

[Jobos]

The pupils have been making videos using photo story for the website but as they are wmv I want to convert them to mp4 so macs and android can open them as well. I’ve used handbrake and format factory to convert them but I’m getting mp4 sizes that are nearly 3 times that of wmv so a 7 minute wmv file at 24MB turns into a 65MB file. The frame size is 640 x 480 and dropping this to 320 x 240 makes little difference to the file size so now I’m starting to run low on hosting space.

 

What are the best setting for online videos please?

[3s-gtech]

We use .swf, but of course it won't play on iOS and many Android devices. Small files though.

[mac_shinobi]

In handbrake think you can adjust the quality of the video as well and not sure if you need audio on the video as well , if so then maybe down the bit rate of the audio from 160 kbps to 128 or lower ??

[Jobos]

I've dropped the frame size to 480 x 360, video bitrate 768 and audio bitrate to 120. I re-converted all the wmv's so now I'm down to 885MB on the website but because of the small video size they look dated. Think I'm going to ask Capita for more space.

[mac_shinobi]

Not sure if this helps but what about uploading them to youtube on an account that you can create or setup for the school and then embed the youtube videos where you need them ?

[Jobos]

That's plan B

[Jobos]

That's plan B

 

Thinking about it, using youtube is a great idea and as I'm working on a new joomla site I can use a joomla extension and open the videos in a lightbox. Only problem is getting them to upload to youtube as I've been plagued with errors all morning and I'll put money on the cause of the problem is the filter capita have in place.

[mac_shinobi]

Thinking about it, using youtube is a great idea and as I'm working on a new joomla site I can use a joomla extension and open the videos in a lightbox. Only problem is getting them to upload to youtube as I've been plagued with errors all morning and I'll put money on the cause of the problem is the filter capita have in place.

 

Not sure if it helps but don't youtube have a https site versus normal http ( see if that helps with uploading via https instead of normal http ) so port 443 ( SSL ) instead of 80 or 8080 ?

 

Presume it's not your proxy ( if you have one ) like smoothwall / TMG or the likes that is causing you issues ?

[Jobos]

No don't we don't have an on site proxy anymore since we ditched the ISA server a few years back. https is giving the same problem so I will take the videos home and upload them there. It really annoys me when things don't work as they should I've wasted hours on this today and like I said I'm sure it's a filter problem. I've tried uploading with IE9, chrome and firefox and they all do give the same error.