Choosing video formats

Over the past year I have been working on a project at a major university where we are moving a graduate music class to an online format. Short video clips are meant to replace the demonstrations in a face-to-face classroom. The video taping has gone well. However, it has been frustrating to try to come to some decision on the video format to be used online. I've not been able to get a consistent "party line" from the university of what we support - and how to produce these video formats from the uncompressed video from the taping.

The purpose of this document is to describe some of the various formats, how they are produced, the various options that can be chosen within the formats, and the strengths and weaknesses of each of the formats.