Trying to figure out what format would be best to encode or convert your videos to in order to publish them online? Before you do that, you should first decide how you want to publish your video – and select a format based on that.
Publishing Videos on Online Streaming Platforms
One of the most popular ways to publish videos online is to upload them to online streaming platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, and so on. Some platforms will then let you embed the video on your blog or website via code that you copy and paste.
In any case if you do publish videos in this way, you should select a format based on the recommended format and settings of the platform that you’re using.
Some platforms are very strict about the format and will reject videos that are not in the recommended format. Others may be more liberal, but will likely transcode the video to the format they recommend internally – which isn’t good for its quality.
That is why you should take a minute and look up the recommended settings for the platform that you’re using. For example you can check out YouTube’s recommended settings and see that they prefer MP4 with H.264 (which many online platforms do).
Publishing Videos Using HTML5
The other popular option to publish videos is to self-host them and add them to a website or blog using the HTML5 video element.
Technically the HTML5 video format can support several video formats, including MP4 with H.264, WebM with VP8 or VP9, and OGG with Theora. However support for WebM and OGG is limited in a fashion as some browsers and mobile devices may not support it.
As a result the safest format to use is MP4 with H.264 – or you could use several versions of the video for different devices if you prefer.
The other format that you may want to consider is MP4 with HEVC (H.265) – but support for it is limited as well and some browsers or devices may have difficulty viewing it. That being said it does offer a step up in compression compared to H.264, and could help you to conserve bandwidth.
Final Words
As you may have noticed, right now the ‘best’ format to publish videos online is MP4 with H.264 due to how widely-supported it is. If you have already encoded your video in a different format you may want to convert it to MP4 with H.264, and for example you could use Movavi Video Converter for that.
Keep in mind that all of the formats mentioned above may eventually change as newer formats become more widely supported. If H.265 becomes more widely-supported it may eventually replace its predecessor, and similarly there are other video formats that could challenge it in the not too distant future – such as AV1.
Still by checking the recommended format for online platforms, or the formats supported by HTML5 video – you should be able to find the best format to publish online videos.