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In the early stages of internet video, you might encode Real, Windows Media, and Quicktime editions of your video, in several sizes, so someone browsing your website could view it, figuring everybody was bound to own at least one of those plugins. As time went by, many people acquired cable modems as well as DSL which eliminated the need to provide small movies for dialup clients. And when Flash modified their nearly universal plugin to show FLV material, a lot of developers transfered to Flash video, simply because putting up just one movie is easier than posting three. Flash seemed to have won . . . for the moment. However, the H.264 codec, also referred to as AVC, then burst on the scene, popularized by their support in Quicktime 7 beginning in April 2005. It instantly blew everyone away with its incredible quality and low bitrate requirements, having the ability to present impressive quality high definition video that began playing practically right away (when encoded by a specialist compressionist). H.264 became the standard codec adopted by manufacturers for all kinds of devices - from camcorders from Canon and Panasonic to Apple ipods, iPhones, and Apple TVs, Sony PlayStations & PSPs, Archos TV, Microsoft Xbox 360s and Zune players, mobile phones and many other devices. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of Windows computer owners had been acquiring Apple iPods, which neccesitated downloading iTunes & Quicktime, so the Quicktime browser tool had been gaining ground rapidly on Windows PCs, as well as being installed on all Macs. Thus once more web movie producers experienced a dilemma; stick with Flash with it's broader browser support or opt for Quicktime H.264 for superior quality and device compatibility? Or both? Finally, the momentous announcement came from Adobe in August of 2007 that the all-pervasive Flash tool would support H.264 encoded video . . . and also offer special hardware acceleration to generate fullscreen H.264 video play more easily. The turmoil was over. H.264 had won the codec wars, perhaps forever. There remained but one doubt. Since H.264 was open source, who would surface with the best implementation of the standard. The answer, for now at least, is x264.
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Carla Cox is a product evangelist for DV Kitchen, the best video encoder for mac on the planet. You can find sample clips rendered with this remarkable x264 encoder at www.dv-kitchen.com
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