Favorite Anime File Formats

Anybody have a preference for a particular file format? I used to prefer rmvb because I hate waiting forever, while an avi/fulle sized mkv downoads.But recently I've been watching 50-60mb Mkv/Mp4 files off of Anistash and I have to say, I'm sold on h264.Encoding h264 sounds like its a pain to learn, but I guess I'll need to. I don't think I can keep producing rmvbs anymore.

I do video editing to a semi-professional level as a hobby; and although I've not really made use of h264, I do have the codecs. The one I have comes with a dead simple conversion app :)

I was meaning finding all of the balnces. The best resoultion, is 210 bitrate better or 230? What difference does it make if the original is XVid vs h264 vs DivX?
Should I be muxing the audio and video?
What impact does the audio sample rate have on playback performance/compatibility?
Do I want to/can I make them Psp compatible?I could do a straight up dump, but those would be worse than my Rmvb encodes. Because I've already mastered it.

it does most of it for you with predefined profiles.

I know. I'm saying those will turn out poorly until you know exactly how to manage them.It will produce h264. But inferior in quality.I should add I encode small, like 50mb. So I have to be more exact or else the files can look blocky or at least smeared.For most people broad tools are fine. But when you try to take the format beyond what it was really designed for, you have to be careful not to end up with crap.Or at least that was my experience with rmvb. It would be great if h264 doesn't suffer the same problems. But given that it took Arkaye and Enxero a good couple of months to master it, I'm thinking its no easy task.

I use the mainconcept encoder; I would expect they know what they are doing.

I like the avi format above all other's posted, but I must add that avi has also many different ways to be encoded. I'd go for xvid for video and cbr lame mp3 for audio. Why cbr? Because then I can easily edit it in virtuadub. Somehow people always manage to mess up when encoding, meaning you can't recompress it. And ripping it with graphedit is also easier this way.h264 is hogging my pc and is too large to download.

IceFiend, since I have the h264 encoder software on my NLE system, I ran some tests for you.Using the baseline profile with no changes to the settings, it reduced DVD resolution MPG2 from 180MB for 3min50s to 23MB with no noticable quality loss, this could have been reduced further to 20MB by dropping the audio bitrate from 224 to 128. The main level profile would have halved the size of the file to 90MB. (I didn't try main level). High level seems to be aimed at high-definition content. I maintained audio sample rate, video resolution and framerate at the values set by the source file. The encode took around 5 1/2 minutes.

:p I'm not a total noob to mkv, I understand the underlying benchmarks, I'm saying that getting quality out of really tight encodes requires personal experience. While I'm not familiar with your proram, it probably uses the same compression libraries as all of the other encoders.
Its not the encoder program, its the encoder person.23mb at four minutes would be about 125mb for an episode. I know that 125mb looks almost flawless at that size. But if you drop the four minute sample to 11mb and you'll see what I mean about the quality loss. It'll probably look a little better than a 50mb Rmvb, but there's going to be a lot of room for improvment.When it comes to Rmvb I know that depending on my source file I may have to encode as much as 15mb bigger to maintain the same quality. It all depends on understanding how different files will compress. I've seen that certain XVid shows can acctually look better with a 270-220 pass than a 320-270. But I have to see the source file to know if that's going to be the case.I imagine h264 comes with its own unique parameters that effect quality.Its not that the encoding program is inferior. But rather the encoder(me) who needs to learn how to make proper h264 encodes. But that takes a considerable amount of time to learn something top to bottom like that. I probably spent a good 10-12 hours to really master rmvb encodes. And even there I never really found a solution to color bleeding from low quality sources. Aside from making huge 70+mb encodes, which just isn't acceptable for our site.

I gotta say AVI is my Favorite, but i'm finding OGM isn't a bad Format, just havin to go outta my way to get a Codec for it was annoying lol

Nightmare: AVI isn't a codec, it is a container format. This means that a file with an .avi extension could be encoded with any codec.

i think its avi

.DPG for me ;D
love havin anime on my DS.

Mkv/Mp4 is the best format (for me).

This is a tough call.... really... tough call. I chose AVI because it is the easiest to import to the iPod touch. I like Matroska, but some anime isn't as high quality as an AVI. Screw Real.

Why is MKV and MP4 a combined option?
Anyway. MKV for soft subs and chapters.

Wow, a whole lot of people chose avi formats. XD I'm a fan too but I'm partial to mkv most of the time for the whole subtitle/language option. :)

mp4, smaller size and better compression.
i bet a the 1GB video file i made would have been a hell lot smaller if it was made as an MP4...

I like AVI :P
But that only cause I can never get MKV Videos to play right :P

Avi always, an all around container with lots of encoding options, great quality and small size plus lots of devices can play it (including my phone) so lots of anime wherever and whenever is needed.