What Containers Best for YouTube -> WMP??

[Davy]

I am using VLC to convert videos downloaded from Youtube to play in Windows
Media Player and am not sure what container would be best.
The options for downloading are mpg and flv.

WMP, out of the box, will play .asf .wmv and .avi containers. I have
installed ffdshow so it will also play .mpg files but not .mp4 files.

So what format would be best to download and what to convert it to - giving
minimum recoding and thus degredation.

I have explored that the Haali Splitter route and found that the reviews of
Haali Splitter rate it poorly - Windows crashes, cannot uninstall, etc. So
I am trying to avoid that route.

This is not a subject I understand so don't hesitate to ask for more info
if I have not provided enough.

Davy

[VanguardLH]

Post by Davy
I am using VLC to convert videos downloaded from Youtube to play in Windows
Media Player and am not sure what container would be best.
The options for downloading are mpg and flv.
WMP, out of the box, will play .asf .wmv and .avi containers. I have
installed ffdshow so it will also play .mpg files but not .mp4 files.
So what format would be best to download and what to convert it to - giving
minimum recoding and thus degredation.
I have explored that the Haali Splitter route and found that the reviews of
Haali Splitter rate it poorly - Windows crashes, cannot uninstall, etc. So
I am trying to avoid that route.
This is not a subject I understand so don't hesitate to ask for more info
if I have not provided enough.
Davy

Entirely depends on WHO is going to get the video. If you are the only
one enjoying the video then use a format that generates the smallest
file size as long as it doesn't sacrifice quality beyond what you are
willing to tolerate. If just for you, FLV is probably doable but you'll
need a player that support FLV. If you are distributing the videos to
someone else, well, they probably don't have an FLV viewer. Only you
know what is your target audience so you'll have to pick a file format
that will likely be usable to them. I wouldn't go with .avi (too big)
but .wmv is doable. You can even decide how much compression gets used
with your .wmv output. With FormatFactory, for example, you can pick
high, medium, or low for quality and size of .wmv output.

[Davy]

Post by VanguardLH
Entirely depends on WHO is going to get the video. If you are the
only one enjoying the video then use a format that generates the
smallest file size as long as it doesn't sacrifice quality beyond what
you are willing to tolerate. If just for you, FLV is probably doable
but you'll need a player that support FLV. If you are distributing
the videos to someone else, well, they probably don't have an FLV
viewer. Only you know what is your target audience so you'll have to
pick a file format that will likely be usable to them. I wouldn't go
with .avi (too big) but .wmv is doable. You can even decide how much
compression gets used with your .wmv output. With FormatFactory, for
example, you can pick high, medium, or low for quality and size of
.wmv output.

Vanguard, that is good general advice but my question was really technical.
i.e. what conversion is likely to lead to the least quality degradation and
file size not too big? For instance I would imagine that converting a .mov
file which is jpeg-compression based to a keyframe-based compressed file
would give very poor results?

DAvy

[VanguardLH]

Post by Davy

Post by VanguardLH
Entirely depends on WHO is going to get the video. If you are the
only one enjoying the video then use a format that generates the
smallest file size as long as it doesn't sacrifice quality beyond what
you are willing to tolerate. If just for you, FLV is probably doable
but you'll need a player that support FLV. If you are distributing
the videos to someone else, well, they probably don't have an FLV
viewer. Only you know what is your target audience so you'll have to
pick a file format that will likely be usable to them. I wouldn't go
with .avi (too big) but .wmv is doable. You can even decide how much
compression gets used with your .wmv output. With FormatFactory, for
example, you can pick high, medium, or low for quality and size of
.wmv output.

Vanguard, that is good general advice but my question was really technical.
i.e. what conversion is likely to lead to the least quality degradation and
file size not too big? For instance I would imagine that converting a .mov
file which is jpeg-compression based to a keyframe-based compressed file
would give very poor results?
DAvy

Video compression and measuring loss of quality is not something with
which I am expert other than the subject analysis of what looks better
or worse to my eyes. I can, for example, use FormatFactory to conver
from FLV to WMV along with choosing if I want high, medium, or low
quality in the WMV output. I can reduce an AVI video down to a small
fraction of its original size when going to WMV low format (and if it
isn't something that needs high resolution or large window size then the
file will be small). Alas, I haven't come across a FLV to WMV
conversion that doesn't sacrifice noticeable quality while trying to
make a very small WMV file (FLV ends up being a lot smaller in file
size).

YouTube lists what filetypes they will accept for video formats. My bet
is that FormatFactory probably supports all of them so you could play
with conversions to see which gives you the smallest file size while
also trying to reduce loss of quality.