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Web video formats - which is best?
When choosing animation or best video format for the web, there are so many choices: Windows Media Player, QuickTime, Java, Shockwave, and Real Player.
The fundamental question, from the web designer's point of view, is not so much the quality of the format, but the universal accessibility of your chosen route.
For major movie footage – which uses up a whole load of bandwidth on your server – I recommend embedding the code through a third party, such as YouTube.
The service is free and it's the most popular video provider on the web. (Here's a example of a You Tube hosted video, embedded in a web page.)
But when you get into animations and graphics, there really is only one choice to deliver a universally accessible format: Flash.
Flash Player is the most universally accessible format for video / animation on the internet, with 98.3% of the market.
