Video Formats

What is the most reliable video format to be used?

The most reliable video format tends to be an AVI file with motion JPEG (mjpeg) video compression and uncompressed linear PCM audio at 44.1 kHz (aka CD-quality audio).

Motion JPEG is hardly the most effective codec, so usually we use DivX4 (aka mp4) in an AVI container. For the best compression quality H264 is often used, which also works quite well.

Video seeking requires I-frames in the video file. For accurate seeking, the file should contain at least one I-frame and audio chunk per second. If the I-frames (or audio chunks) are missing, the playback engine does not find the seek location as accurately.

see: Instructions on compiling FFMPEG with more video codecs