Most Universal Video Compressor/Codec

[sanddrag]

What is the most universal video compressor/codec for an AVI video? I want it to be able to play on almost anyone's computer that has Windows Media Player. In case you were wondering it is a recorded "drive contstaint" animation from Inventor.

[Jeff Rodriguez]

I'd think that MPEG2 would be best. Any half decent media player will play a standard MPEG2 video.
But that won't leave it as an .avi, instead it would be .mpg

If you want to leave it AVI, I have no idea. As far as I know, there aren't any true standards for avi video. But I could be wrong.

[sanddrag]

It doesn't have that option. It has a lot of them listed in there but nut MPEG2. It has MPEG4. When I select that one, it still saves the file as an AVI. Any other ideas?

[Jeff Rodriguez]

http://www.tmpgenc.net/e_main.html

There's one of the best MPG encoders.

[sanddrag]

That's not what I'm looking for. See, in inventor, when I go "drive constraint" and record it, it gives me a list of a whole bunch of different compressors to chose from. I need to know which one to pick for most universal playing. I don't want any external program. Thanks.

[jdiwnab]

I know that Window Media Player will play just about any MPEG's, it will play some AVI's depending on the encoding and it will play all WMV's (which are their own type of encoding). I don't know off had what Inventor encodes as or all of what WMP will play. Maybe if you listed what options they had, or is there too many. Or maybe you could just do it and try out what you made.

[Kyle Fenton]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

What is the most universal video compressor/codec for an AVI video? I want it to be able to play on almost anyone's computer that has Windows Media Player. In case you were wondering it is a recorded "drive contstaint" animation from Inventor.

The most universal codec would probably be cinepak, and MPEG-1. But both of these codecs are old, and rarely look good when rendering.
MPEG-2 is really not a good choice because media players don't really like raw MPEG-2 files.
Your best bet would be to make it DV or uncompressed file, and encode it into a WMV, and a MOV (w/MPEG-4 codec). The reason is that I have seen some bad results when you just let inventor just rendered it into a finish codec like MPEG-4. There are several encoders out there, but something like QuickTime Pro or Windows Movie Maker will do the job.

[Greg Marra]

AVI is a container format. The codec used to compress the video has nothing to do with the fact that it is stored in an AVI file.

This being said, I would recommend the Windows Media 9 MPEG4 v3 codec. It's really quite good, and any computer with windows Media 9 can play it. You can compress stuff really far and keep it good looking. It sometimes gets to the point where I have as much audio data as video data.

But if you're looking for total universality, you're going to want to use MPEG-2, which is kind of bulky.

[sanddrag]

What about Cinepak? Can everyone's WMP play that? The hige list of codecs came from the Ace Mega Codecs Pack I had installed but have since removed. Now there is just a small list, and Cinepak seems to be the only one that really works. I'm just wondering if it will play for most everyone.

[Adam Richards]

Suggestion:
Make an uncompressed file, and then reencode in MOV format. It'll probably be the most universal encoding format that everyone can play.

[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by Adam Richards

Suggestion:
Make an uncompressed file, and then reencode in MOV format. It'll probably be the most universal encoding format that everyone can play.

As an uncompressed file, it comes out very large and it doesn't really play that well (very jumpy, I don't know why). Also, I highly doubt that an mov is something everyone can play. Nearly all Windows computers (like 85%+ of personal computers out there) have WMP and WMP does not play mov. It takes quicktime. And I'm guessing that not every Windows computer hat QT, not even close.

[jdiwnab]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

It takes quicktime. And I'm guessing that not every Windows computer hat QT, not even close.

I wouldn't count on that. I don't no any real data on it, but with the proliferation of iPods and the like, QuickTime has recived a huge boost. It is the power behind iTunes and thus is packaged with the iTunes download now. Anyone that has and iPod and/or has iTunes has Quicktime. If someone doesn't have quicktime, they should get it. There is plenty of content out there for Quicktime, so why not.

[Adam Richards]

Originally Posted by sanddrag

As an uncompressed file, it comes out very large and it doesn't really play that well (very jumpy, I don't know why). Also, I highly doubt that an mov is something everyone can play. Nearly all Windows computers (like 85%+ of personal computers out there) have WMP and WMP does not play mov. It takes quicktime. And I'm guessing that not every Windows computer hat QT, not even close.

And I'm pretty sure that at least 95% of the computers that don't have quicktime probably wouldn't be used to view your dragon wings

I think it's been an established fact for awhile that Windows is for general use and gaming, and MacOS is for audio and video production (and Linux is for everything imaginable, but that's another story). The codecs that Apple produce are far better than the ones that Microsoft produces (esp. H.264, the new QT codec), so it would seem logical to use a better codec.