What is the Best Format to Publish Videos on a Blog

From all indications, videos are gradually becoming the leading channel in the content market.

At the same time, the technology is multifaceted and the different video formats make it somewhat embarrassing and confusing.

Before you can figure out which format is best to publish videos on a blog, you need to first know how the video will be published. As you’re probably aware there are several methods that can be used to publish videos on a blog, and each will require you to select a format in a different way.

HTML5 Video

If you intend to publish your video directly by self-hosting it and then using the HTML5 video element, you can choose between several formats that it supports. The most popular are MP4 with H.264, WebM with VP8 or VP9, and OGG with Theora.

Out of those options the ‘safest’ format to use is MP4 with H.264. Although WebM and OGG are supported by most other browsers, some browsers such as Internet Explorer and Safari still don’t support them and mobile devices may have difficulty playing them.

Another option is to create different versions of the video using different formats and then use contingencies in your HTML code. For example you could create a WebM with VP9 version and then add a MP4 with H.264 version as a contingency in case users on Safari or Internet Explorer can’t play it.

Online Video Platforms

One of the most popular ways to publish videos on blogs is by using online video platforms such as YouTube or Vimeo. Essentially these platforms will let you upload videos and then you can embed them from the platform using special embed code.

Every online video platform will have a recommended format and video settings – and as far as possible you should choose a format based on that. Some platforms enforce their recommended format strictly and won’t accept videos in other formats.

For the most part however online video platforms will accept a wide range of formats, but are likely to transcode the video to the format they want to use. If you upload the video in the recommended format from the start you can avoid that, which is useful as it may impact the video quality.

To be completely honest the recommended format of most online video platforms right now is MP4 with H.264, and for example you can refer to YouTube’s guidelines.

Other Video Players and Plugins to publish videos on a blog

In some cases you may prefer to use other video players and plugins to publish videos on your blog, either due to their convenience or the fact that they have features you want to use. While each player and plugin is different, most will have recommended settings – or at very least a list of supported formats.

That is what you can use to decide which format is best, and if there are several options you should look at the compression that each can provide. Seeing as this option will require you to self-host your videos, if you are able to compress it more effectively you will conserve your bandwidth.

Conclusion

After you figure out which format is best, you should try to encode your video in it from the word go. However if you’ve already encoded your video you may need to convert it using a video converter for Windows. alternatively, you could try Movavi Video Converter for Mac.

As you can see if you first identify how you’re going to publish videos on your blog, it will make selecting the best format a whole lot easier. That is why if you aren’t sure which method you’re going to use, you should first figure it out – so that you can then start to create and encode videos accordingly.

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