Publishing both WMV and MP4 - Is it worth it?

[HPDZ]

The issues described in my "Web hosting" thread are making me consider whether it's worth it to publish everything in two file formats like I have been doing (MP4 and WMV). Back several years ago, I don't think the Windows Media Player could play AVC-encoded video files. But now, I believe since Windows Media Player version 9, and Windows XP SP2, Microsoft has been providing an MPEG-4 video codec.

So I am thinking of just removing all WMV encoded content and only publishing stuff in MP4 files with the AVC/AAC codecs. That will cut the total size of the site by nearly 50%, about 15GB or so. It will also greatly reduce the amount of time I have to spend uploading and encoding the videos.

Would it break anyone's heart if I stopped using the WMV format?

[cbuchner1]

Would it break anyone's heart if I stopped using the WMV format?

My heart would jump with joy if you actually dropped that proprietary format. Also because it saves your web site (hosting contract)

[HPDZ]

One good reason to keep at least the low-bitrate WMV files -- Internet Explorer will only give a progressive download experience (that is, the player plays as the video downloads, rather than downloading the whole file then playing) with WMV files. FireFox, Chrome, and Safari do this with MP4 files, but IE does not, and like it or not, it's 50-80% of the traffic that hits my site.

[cKleinhuis]

just include a small flash - web-player to play mp4 videos right from your site, so that anyone can watch them, and download if they want...
we all know that microsoft tries to gain territority everywhere, by not implementing common sense standards, i disagree with the opinion, just
because so many use it i have to conform ... the wmv files in generall are a pain in the ass, especially when downloaded, most of them do not
allow to scrub even when fully available on local disk....

i do not really know if the h2.64 codec is freely available for encoding for everyone, if it is, go for it, best compression rates, best quality,
most modern browsers can play mp4 videos (with scrubbing) right from the browsers <video> tag, but as always this doesnt apply to any
browser nor OS, so, i am a little of a flash fanatic because i earn my money with it, and flash has one pure bonus to any web-language, due
to the fact it is proprietary it is workin on ANY platform ... and using a flash player as an option for watching videos right on the site it is
the best choice - in my point of view - check out http://flowplayer.org/ for an flash video player solution ....

[Scotsgit]

http://www.ilikemall.com/how-to/convert-wmv-to-mp4-mac.html

[Sockratease]

http://www.ilikemall.com/how-to/convert-wmv-to-mp4-mac.html

You do realize that just dropping a link in an 18 month old topic and running away without even an introduction for your first post gives the appearance of you being some sort of spammer, right?

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