For holiday gift I was thinking of making USB/microSDs full of TV/movies. The intended recipients are not tech savvy types. They would be using windows computers, normal TVs etc.

What kind of file formats/encodings would be good to package the files in? What is safe and universally usable? And which ones are to be avoided? I'd like to guarentee they'll play without any fooling around with drivers or software.

And I want them to be as small as possible so that I can fit more stuff.

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[–] iloveDigit@piefed.social 68 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

.mp4 with H264: the most universal, and can be compressed to smaller sizes than you might think. Compatibility and compression will still vary depending if you use AAC or opus audio

.webm with VP9 and opus audio: better compression, not as universal. More open-standards based, maybe best balance of compression and compatibility

.mp4 or webm with AV1 and opus audio: probably best compression, also probably less compatibility than VP9, maybe depends what devices they use - good on new computers / phones / Android based TVs, more iffy on a wider or older range of devives. MP4 maybe friendlier than webm on newish Apple devices