What video file format is best for you
 

Times are changing I wonder what type of file you all prefer out of these.

WMV (Windows media files)
AVI (many formats)
MP4 (flash, mobile format)

Any of them work for VLC player so fine by me whichever. FLV format has become very widely used by me as that's the format used for downloading videos from media sites such as youtube

I'm a researcher/engineer with a lot of experience in media compression and streaming technologies, so I thought I'd explain the differences between these formats in some detail:

All of these formats (WMV, AVI, MP4) are media container formats, meaning that their purpose is just to bundle together encoded audio (e.g., AAC or MP3) and video streams (e.g. H.264 or DivX). As such, the container formats are not very important compared to the actual media streams they contain.

That being said, I prefer the MP4 container format because it has excellent support across different platforms, and works well with the most popular audio/video coding formats. If you use AAC for audio, H.264 for video, and MP4 as the container, chances are it will work on everything (phones, tablets, game consoles, PCs, set-top boxes, ...).

AVI is an old format designed by Microsoft that has been extended several times to do more than it was originally intended for. It is an inefficient format that is slowly but steadily dying out. I won't miss it. :)

WMV (also known as "ASF") is a more recent format, also designed by Microsoft. It is more efficient than AVI, but is mostly used with Microsoft's own codecs (instead of the more common AAC/H.264 formats supported by all devices today).

Btw, here's a table that compares features in different container formats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...tainer_formats

I like wmv but i also like mp4. avi i don't like that much because they tend to take up a lot more space then wmv or mp4. I used to do some video editing and such and avi is just a pain to deal with.

Oops :huh:
I?ll better start posting in another format then (mp4?).

I noticed mediafire will let you stream .mp4 files now in high def and other file hosts will probably follow suit.

here are some words to the formats.
Anyway, what format you use. WMV, AVI or MP4 are only the formats. Each format has a lot of his own codecs, For example: AVI with the codec X.264 brings you really good results and without using big space.
Regards Caty

I have my own video converter. Most of my videos are stored as FLVs. I like MP4s for phones, WMVs for the computer and my TV only plays MPEGs. I've had strange results with AVIs, some AVIs work on most video players and some only work on KMPlayer. Probably not much help but I don't really mind as I've already gone to the trouble of catering for all the ones available.

I prefer mp4. Its the most efficient (cpu/power) and instantaneously plays when clicked on any point of the video without skipping/freezing (wmv sometimes does this).

i prefer avi