I’m a fan, user and promoter of the H.264 (also known as the MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding) codec. It’s an excellent standard which provides great quality at low(er) bitrates while supporting true High Definition resolutions such as 1080p (1920×1080).
It is the flagship format of Apple QuickTime and also used by large studios on many Blu-ray releases. Virtually all of the modern personal computers in use at this time support the format or are capable of supporting it:
- Adobe Flash Player 9 is capable of playing H.264 content
- the free QuickTime Player media software supports it
- QuickTime Pro supports exporting to H.264, thus iMovie HD and other QuickTime-based products can use it
- professional video editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro support exporting to H.264
- the open source FFmpeg project supports H.264
- open source media players such as VLC Media Player and mplayer support H.264
Unfortunately, Microsoft does not support it at this time, favouring — instead — their own non-open VC-1 codec for HD content and Silverlight.
