Can anyone give me a 101 on digital video formats?

[Deefstes]

I have to be honest that I get a bit confused by all the various video formats being bandied about. There's AVI, MPG-2, MPG-4, FLV, FFV to name but a few that springs to mind immediately.

I hear the terms "container formats" and have no idea what is meant by it. Then there are all these different codecs. Could anyone put all of this into perspective for me perhaps?

What are the different advantages/disadvantages of the various formats? Which is a good format to use for high wuality video and which is a good format to use for small sized video?

Thanks in advance

 

[Deefstes]

Maybe I could add that the main reason I'd like to understand this better is because my point and shoot camera takes nice video clips but they're huge. I'd love to know if there's a way to make them smaller (even if it means losing some quality).

I mean we could save all of our digital images in BMP or TIF format but that would be huge so many of us prefer to save them in JPG format (sacrificing some quality). Hoe would this translate in video terminology?

For what it's worth, my camera is a FujiFilm F30 and it saves the videos as AVI. A 3min video clip could be as big as 200MB. The resolution is 640x480.

 

[Monarch_15w]

depending on what format your camcorder shoots in. I would use the highest resolution possible. ex if you shoot native mpg 4 then stay with that format. Like me I use AVC HD so... I shoot that and dont convert it at all so I get the highest resolution possible. I would use a program like iMovie (MAC) or like a Ulead DVD (PC). there is a really good program Moavi it tells you what to convert your format for depending on what you are converting to IE ipod, youtube etc.

Avi is just the standard video format same as wma. mpg-4 is a higher video quality same with AVCHD and VC1 they are hd video. Mpg 2 is usually a lower resolution.