We currently offer the videos in two formats: MP4 and OGV. The MP4 is high-quality video that Nick produces with clever compression. I produce the OGV versions from Nick’s files, with less clever compression and generally much poorer video quality.
When you view the video through the player that’s embedded in our website, your web browser is given a choice of which format to play. Firefox and Chrome can play both formats, but will generally pick the lower quality OGV. Internet Explorer will play the MP4, because it doesn’t support OGV. A few platforms will play the OGV because it’s the only format they support — specifically Opera, and some (many?) Linux systems which don’t include MP4 codecs.
It’s a bit like the old VHS vs Betamax video tape wars 🙂
We have various options. We could scrap support for OGV, meaning that most users will see the higher quality video, but a few users may be left out. We could still give them an OGV they can download separately from the web player.
Alternatively, I could double the file size of the OGV files. Currently I aim for 100 MB per hour of video. We’re not close to any bandwidth limits on our server, so we could comfortably serve higher definition videos… providing BAA members are on good broadband links where 200 MB per talk isn’t an issue. Personally I reckon we could double the file size without any problems.
Thoughts?