The videos that businesses use may often be encoded in various formats depending on how they were recorded and the needs at the time they were encoded. While that isn’t a problem in itself, it will mean that at some point or other the format may need to be converted or transcoded to use the video in a certain way.

While there are many different formats out there, the fact of the matter is that right now there are three that are most useful for businesses:

• MP4 with H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC)

Currently there is no format that is more popular than MP4 with H.264 – making it the ‘go to’ format for businesses to export videos. Because it is widely-supported by most devices and platforms, it is the perfect format for distributing business videos.

Additionally, MP4 with H.264 is the preferred format for online platforms – including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and more. It is one of the formats supported by HTML5 video as well, and is more widely-supported than the other options.

Aside from its popularity and compatibility, the H.264 codec provides good compression – though newer codecs have since surpassed it on that front.

• MP4 or MKV with H.265 (HEVC)

The H.265 codec was built as the successor to H.264, and provides significantly better compression. In fact it can reduce the file size of a H.264 video by up to half, while maintaining the same video quality.

Although that may make it seem like a superior format, the fact of the matter is that H.265 is not as widely supported. As things stand software decoding for H.265 is relatively common, but requires a lot of processing power.

The hardware support that would be required to make H.265 more feasible is only present in newer devices (manufactured circa 2015 and onwards).

Overall using MP4 or MKV with H.265 is a good option for businesses – provided the device the video will be viewed on supports it. The compression will help businesses conserve storage space, and make it easier to transfer and distribute high quality videos.

• MPEG-2

Despite being a (very) dated format at this point, MPEG-2 remains a useful one – especially for businesses. It has two main ways in which it is used: To encode videos for DVDs, and as an intermediate format for editing.

For businesses that want to create video DVDs, there is no better format than MPEG-2 as it is the only one that can be played on the majority of DVD players. Aside from the format, MPEG-2 videos for DVDs need to use specific resolutions, aspect ratios, bitrate, and other settings however.

The fact that MPEG-2 is less compressed than other video formats make it a good choice for editing videos. While professional production studios may prefer ‘lossless’ videos, their file size makes them difficult to handle – and MPEG-2 is a decent compromise.

As a business it is important to be able to convert videos between formats – especially the three listed above. That can be done using software, and for example you could use Movavi Video Converter to convert MTS to MP4, AVI to MKV, or any other formats.

Between the three formats listed above, businesses should be to cover most of their needs – though other formats may be required in specific cases. On top of that as newer formats are released they may very well replace some of the formats mentioned.