Bottlenecks in Standardization of Online Video Highlighted: Survey Report

Sorenson Media conducted a survey of hundreds of thousands of video professionals in order to determine how they approached their work in the complex online video world and also elucidated why standardization in online video was difficult.

Survey results revealed that MP4 was by far the most widely used End Video Format format on mobile devices with Flash, HTML5, Windows Media having a limited following. The still emerging WebM format was seen as a slow starter with just five percent adoption.

QuickTime Reference Movie was the most popular input format used by pros with almost 28 percent of respondents indicating it as their preferred choice.

According to the survey, a couple of clear facts emerged. Firstly, the diverse output and input formats brought to focus the increasing complexity of online video and secondly the fact that a majority of respondents opted for more than one format for web and mobile deployment revealed that there was no single standard.

In addition to the formats selected, 78 percent of respondents indicated a strong preference for H.264 codec to encode their video content.

This broad and varied use of formats and the multitude of use cases, the diversity among platforms and environments for which video professionals prepared their video content and the different ways in which they encoded video content only reinforced the increasing complexity of online video preparation.

The survey indicated that with more devices and formats entering the market, overall complexity further increased and this in turn further heightened the need for video quality and performance

Sorenson Media develops video encoding and workflow solutions and its extensive user base includes 70 of the Fortune 100 companies and 60 percent of the broadcast station groups in the United States.

“Standardization in online video is still far from reality, which means doing it right can get extremely complicated. It requires the best work of top professionals who can fully utilize and adapt solutions to the many tasks, tools and processes that make up their video workflows,” said Peter Csathy (News - Alert), president and CEO at Sorenson Media.