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No they're not. MOV is QuickTime File Format (QTFF), a proprietary Apple format. MP4 (MPEG-4 Part 14) is an open standard from the MPEG LA. Technically, they have nothing in common.

I'm not sure I understand. Either way you'll have to reupload the video. So why not upload a new, clean Youtube video and then update links?

I'm gonna reiterate: what's wrong with telling the "majority of the viewers" to go to Youtube? 720p Youtube is not something I would call ugly. If they care about quality, then they have properly configured players and will download the high-quality releases; if they don't care about quality, then they won't mind going to Youtube. What's wrong with that? We're discussing releases that could also be played on hardware devices. So standards are important. That's not the quality I'm worried about (the difference is indeed negligible). I'm just saying that since 99% of videos are 48kHz, there must be a compelling reason to deviate from this de facto standard. When you're worried about compatibility, you do everything you can to follow standards unless you have a very good reason not to. You're suggesting I go to Youtube to make my case for MKV? Somehow I don't think that'll work

That's a valid point. However the most important audio is from Ross's microphone, so I don't think it justifies using a non-standard (for video) sampling rate just because background sounds coming from the game are 44.1. Assuming that they're 44.1 (didn't check).

Well, you may have failed at the "actual arguments" assignment, but you certainly do a hell of a job super-extrapolating from other people's statements. I bet you can read into my mind right now.

Well, I think I'm gonna get some popcorn. In the mean time you might want to throw in some actual arguments amongst the personal attacks and baseless statements. It isn't fun for long when it's so obvious. Also, I never said people who don't care about quality are "retarded" or something like that. They're just normal people with different priorities. I'm just saying Youtube is enough for them, so I don't see why we should be discussing lowest common denominators like AVI, WMV or XviD.

Hey, I believe you're the insulting one here. Thank you for editing your post, I take that as an apology. From what I understood, the reasoning is that people who don't care will just use Youtube, so it's a non-issue for them. We're discussing releases for people who actually care and are not satisfied with Youtube or WMVs. That's also the reason why the current poll is meaningless: if you just ask everyone, including people who don't give a shit about quality, you get absurd results, such as the AVI container currently leading the poll (which made me laugh for a moment, then it just made me sad).

If you want to do true lossless compression from game captures you must use the RGB24 colorspace. Any conversion to YUV will be lossy because it's done in integer. In a proper encoding chain there must be zero "incorrect colorspace conversions". There should be one and only one: RGB24 to YV12 with the proper video levels and gamut mapping. Of course I expect this to be more difficult to verify when using GUIs like megui instead of using x264 directly. You're just paying the price of user-friendliness. The standard audio format for videos and everything else except music is 48kHz, not 44.1, which is only used on CDs. 48kHz should always be used on videos. These people can just as well go to Youtube. The releases we're talking about are aimed at people who care about quality. Thanks you for the good laugh I despise VLC for its shitty video rendering, it seems other people are having other problems as well. It definitely is a shitty player. Wait… you're saying the same people who use VLC and like WMV would download 1080p episodes? I don't think so. As I said, we need to differentiate here. I agree. Exact 30 fps is rarely seen, but I don't think hardware devices will have issues with it. It would be possible to slow the video down to 29.97 by resampling the audio, but I don't think it would be useful.

H.264 in lossless mode? Have you got any clue what you're talking about? Just to give you an idea: the resulting files would be so big that you could fit 30 minutes of video into one Blu-ray and the resulting bitrate so high that no computer would be able to play it in real time. H.264 lossless is for archiving, not for distribution. Sure, I'm a perfectionist, but there are limits to insanity. Also, MPEG-4 ALS/SLS do not have any encoder or decoder available aside from reference implementations. It seems you just did one or two Google searches and then came here just to throw acronyms around. If you don't know what you're talking about, please don't pretend like you do. AFAIK, H.264 is more supported on Apple devices than XviD. You've never tried Media Player Classic have you... It beats VLC any day. That seems to be the only fact we agree upon. This shows how little you really know about existing devices and their capabilities. Not everyone has the newest top-of-the-line devices. I even happen to have tested various settings of an x264 encoded video on an iPod of my nephew's; most of the higher compression settings don't play. The x264 codec supporting devices are usually not cheap, this is another problem with using x264 to the exclusion of other formats. Claiming it as 'the most supported format' is outright ignorance. Are these devices capable of decoding H.264? Yes, absolutely. So my argument stands: they are indeed capable of playing H.264. The thing is, they don't necessarily have to decode all of H.264. That's why profiles were invented: there's the Baseline profile, the Main profile and the High profile. For maximum compatibility with devices, the Main profile should be used. Well, you could even be compatible with low-end feature phones (yes, even they support H.264 - it's in the 3GPP spec) by using the Baseline profile but then the quality would be horrendous. The reason why you were having trouble with your iPod is that you were enabling High profile features, which aren't always supported on hardware devices. EDIT: well, it seems that iPods and older iPhones only support Baseline. What a shame. I would still expect Baseline to be better than XviD, though. The iPhone 4 and iPad support main profile. Considering that small devices like iPod and iPhones have quite a low bitrate limit, you'll never get any high quality video to play on them anyway, be it XviD or H.264. Again, an "encoding guru" who knows what he's doing won't make this kind of mistakes, and will restrict x264 to the Main profile which is the most supported by non-computer devices. Also, stop confusing x264 (which is an encoder) with the format of the files it outputs, which is a subset of the H.264 specification. There is no such as a "x264 codec supporting device", just devices which support specific features of H.264, regrouped under so-called "profiles". So, I'm gonna reiterate: H.264 is the most supported format, and Main is its most supported profile. You'll notice that this doesn't contradict my previous statements.

I dont' see the poll.

Why don't they remux the video instead of re-encoding it? They don't need to touch the video, just the audio. So they just have to edit the audio, encode the audio, and remux it with the original, untouched video stream.

Fixed.

Yes, I just checked it out. That's a real nice piece of equipment. I also noticed the mic you mentioned is available with an USB adapter (x2u) which also has a pre-amp integrated: http://www.shure.com/americas/products/accessories/microphone-accessories/problem-solvers/x2u-xlr-to-usb-signal-adapter They even managed to put 48v phantom power in that thing, not that it's needed, but really cool nonetheless. I feel like buying one myself if I knew a way to justify it. Very interesting indeed. Too bad it's quite expansive compared to the FastTrack, which costs a little more but has more features (like an audio output) compared to the X2u. The X2u probably has better electronics, but I'm not sure that's justified for Ross.

Because WMV is obsolete? Because most players (most notably portable players) are having trouble with it? Because any converter you might use can't do anything about the low quality of the original file? Because you can't reasonably expect people to bother converting between formats (which is a long and painful process when dealing with high-quality video) each time they want to watch a 8-minute episode of Freeman's mind? Because there are people out there (like me) who actually care about having high-quality masters of Ross's videos?

Well, it's not complicated: H.264 has replaced Xvid as leader of video formats. It is used by everyone, including Apple, pirates and media industries. It's the best in terms of quality and support. If you want to encode H.264, x264 is widely considered to be the best encoder in the world. This isn't going to happen unless breakthroughs are made on the Source engine for reasons that are a bit complicated to explain here. I'm interested. Can you elaborate? WMV is an awful format to work in, I agree. As for AVI, I would need software that can replace the functionality of Virtualdub + AVIsynth before I could move to another format completely. All my backups of the videos in AVI and will probably remain that way for a while. AVIsynth is not limited to AVI; it can open any format through DirectShowSource provided you have the right DirectShow filters installed (just install LAV Filters and ffdshow and be done with it). It seems VirtualDub supports DirectShow too, so this also applies for this software. Actually, it's very easy to encode with constant quality with x264 using the --crf parameter. In fact it's even easier than specifying a bitrate, since you only have to do one pass. Of course the downside is that you don't control the size of the file: you can get guaranteed quality or guaranteed size, but obviously not both. File size will increase with quality (quality is specified as a number after --crf), and will decrease with encoding time (the slower the encode, the smaller the file for the same quality). So, if you really want quality-based encoding, you (or your encoding guru) should play with crf and decide which quality level you want after visual comparison. Of course, you should expect hard-to-compress files to get quite large, but I'm assuming that's what you want. I was planning on getting a different soundcard (probably an Asus Xonar) since Creative has pissed me off too much with their driver support and possibly an accompanying headphone amp, I'm wondering how much quality loss there would be for conversion to a regular headphone jack. I'm not aiming for ultra-professional, just halfway decent. Well, you're in luck: besides having a XLR microphone input, the FastTrack also has a headphone amp and a high quality stereo output! In fact, I personally own a FastTrack and use it mostly with my headphones. So you'll be hitting two birds with one stone. Also, it's external, which has its benefits too. The only thing it doesn't have is multichannel (5.1) output, I don't know if that's a problem for you. That's why he's asking for an "encoding guru". Someone who knows what he's doing won't do this kind of mistakes. I don't understand how anyone would suggest XviD and MP3 in 2011. You do realize that even Youtube has better quality than this, right? The FastTrack has an integrated microphone pre-amp. I agree about the dynamic range problem. Voice already has high dynamic range even when speaking normally. If you begin to shout, the dynamic range gets so high that it quickly becomes difficult to avoid both clipping and background noise. H.264 is the most supported format out there. It's used by Blu-ray, European HDTV, Apple, Youtube, pirates… if, in 2011, someone distributes a video player incapable of playing H.264, that man should be shot. Period. Sigh… If only WebM had the same quality and support as H.264…

There's Youtube for that. And besides, it's only "convenient" on a PC running Windows, and difficult to read on everything else.

You're right about containers; however, you're confusing "codec" with "format". We're debating audio/video formats here, not codecs. For example, Xvid is a codec; the corresponding format is MPEG-4 ASF. The other "codecs" you mention are not codecs, they're formats. Although the audio format is debatable (I personally suggest AAC), I think we'll all agree that H.264 should be used as the video format, since it beats the crap out of every other alternative in terms of quality, popularity and software/hardware support. I think we'll also all agree that x264 is the encoder that should be used for pretty much the same reason. You're forgetting Matroska (MKV), which is used with H.264 and various audio formats, usually MP3, AC3, DTS, AAC or in rare cases Vorbis or FLAC. You can't really ignore a very widely used container just because most pirated content uses it.

Personally, I dislike WMV because it's a proprietary, closed format. There's ideological reasons not to use it, and there are fewer software which support WMV because of that. Especially when you're not using Windows. By distributing WMVs you're supporting a format which made a lot of developers pointlessly waste huge amount of time reverse engineering it, whereas that time/money could have been put to better use. So I'm happy you're considering alternatives. Especially considering that the "it's easy to play" argument doesn't hold much weight because inexperienced people will just go to Youtube anyway. As for the replacement: MKV or MP4. They're both open formats. I personally recommend MKV because it's strongly open source and has a rich open source software ecosystem. MKV is also more flexible than MP4, especially on video/audio formats. On the other hand, MKV is harder to play on Apple devices which directly support MP4. I know my way around audio/video formats and containers, but I wouldn't consider myself a "guru" in video encoding. I have some suggestions to make, though. First of all, I think we can differentiate between two different kinds of people who watch your videos (or any other video for that matter): People who don't give a shit about quality and will happily watch it on Youtube at 360p. Experienced people who want the best possible quality, and are ready to pay the price in terms of file size. For the people falling in the second category, I suggest high-bitrate 1080p H.264 video (between 8 and 12 Mbps, depending on visual comparison) and high-quality AAC sound (256-320 kbps). This would put a 8-minute episode between 450 and 700 MB. Besides distributing the resulting file, you could also use it as a master for 1080p Youtube. Also, there is one important issue when producing videos from games: video levels. Simply put, black and white levels are not the same for video from TV, DVD, Blu-ray etc. (16-235) than for other applications like games (0-255). Nowadays, well-configured video players expect standard (16-235) video levels, because that's what's written in the format specifications and that's how 99% of videos are encoded. Problem is, if you're not paying attention, you'll be encoding the game frames (which are in 0-255) without converting to video levels, which means the result will be incorrect in 99% of video players (PCs, HTPCs, Apple devices, TVs, set-top boxes, etc.). That's what's currently happening with your WMVs releases. The result is crushed blacks and burned whites. That's not nitpicking: it actually makes a BIG difference in color and detail, even with the current low-quality WMV files. The "encoding guru" you'll choose should be made aware of the issue (if he isn't already), and should carefully check video levels when converting from RGB to YUV before encoding so that it follows the specifications. You just mentioned the two main problems with sound recording: background noise and room reflections (which results in echo). The best solution to fix both would be to record in a real studio, but that's probably not an option. The second best solution is to use a cardioid (directional) microphone, which is designed to maximize sound input coming from the front on the microphone, attenuating the effects of room reflections and exterior noise. The Blue Snowball mic you're mentioning doesn't sound like good hardware, judging from their web page. When they're touting iOS compatibility on the front page instead of writing about the sound characteristics, and calling something that only outputs 44.1kHz/16bit a "professional" microphone, something's definitely up. I don't have much experience in recording, but I've heard that the industry standard for voice recording is the Shure SM58. According to most, its performance/price ratio is the best around, and it's used by plenty of real professional sound engineers throughout the world. You probably can't go wrong if you buy this one, and for $100, it won't cost you your car. It has a XLR connector, so you should probably buy an external professional sound card to connect it, for example the M-Audio FastTrack which is quite good (there are probably cheaper alternatives, but I don't know about their quality). If you can't afford the SM58 + external sound card combo, I don't know the low-end segment well enough to help you with cheaper alternatives. Maybe you could find something acceptable, maybe not. As a final advice, make sure you're recording in the maximum sampling rate and bit depth available before editing. When encoding, convert the audio to 16bit/48kHz (not 44.1) which is the industry standard.