MP4 is the leading video format video professionals employ to distribute content on the Web and to mobile devices, according to survey results released April 15 by Sorenson Media.
The survey found that 69 percent of users employ it regularly for the Web, and 58 percent use it for content destined for mobile devices.
The majority of survey respondents selected more than one format from the options provided, revealing a broad diversity among formats used for Web and mobile deployment. No single format ran away as the dominant means of content distribution.
According to the findings, for Web video, in addition to MP4, several formats demonstrated strong support from video professionals, including Flash (54 percent); QuickTime (45 percent); and Windows Media (34 percent). The emerging WebM format was selected by 5 percent of respondents.
For mobile video, MP4 adoption significantly outpaces other formats. Following MP4 was Flash (16 percent); HTML5 (16 percent); Windows Media (9 percent) and WebM (3 percent).
The survey found 78 percent of respondents said they use the H.264 codec to encode their video content.
QuickTime Reference Movie was the preferred input choice with nearly 28 percent of respondents. As with outputs, every major input format was represented, including MOV (25 percent), ProRes (10 percent), AVI (9 percent), DNxHD (8 percent), MPEG-4 (7 percent), MPEG-2 (3 percent), FLV (2 percent) and WMV (2 percent).
The survey also revealed diversity among platforms and environments for which video professionals are preparing their video content. Eighty-nine percent of respondents indicated that they encoded for the Web, followed in popularity by DVD (67 percent), mobile (46 percent), corporate (45 percent) and broadcast (43 percent).
