What are the best Flash video frame dimensions?

As part of the changes we've been making to the video encoding on our Web site, we've been looking at a bunch of movies that people have uploaded, and wondering why some come out better than others.

One thing that makes a huge difference is the resolution of the source video. There's one really simple rule to remember: video codecs perform best when the frame width and height use multiples of 16. So 768x432 will actually look better than 896x504, even though it has fewer pixels.

Here's a handy guide to the best video resolutions for both 4:3 and 16:9 videos, courtesy of encoding.com.

Encoding phase 1: complete

We've now completed the first phase of fixing the encoding problems that have been dogging us for a while and moved over to using encoding.com on our Web site. This means that when you upload a movie, it first goes through the default local encoding and a holding flv is put in place. Meanwhile, your original file is sent on to encoding.com for conversion to flv using their on2V6 encoding (a higher quality encoding algorithm that should eliminate the sound synch issues you've been seeing as well as providing better quality images and support more codecs).

You'll also find that clicking the "download" link under the player lets you download the original file, rather than the flv. So it's worth uploading those high quality movies again - and don't forget to note in the description when it's worth downloading rather than streaming.

And finally, you can now go to My Movies->Edit Movie and replace the current uploaded file without losing your views, comments or ratings.

After much blood, sweat and tears, some hacking, some cunning, and a few false starts, we're pretty sure it's all working as it should, but this is where we need your help - again. If you could give the new system a go - particularly anyone who previously had sound synch issues - we'd appreciate it. Let us know if you have any problems and if it actually does improve the quality! And please tell us which codecs and file formats you used, so we can start to compile a list of known good and bad ones. Put them in comments here, or post them to this thread in the forum. It really helps, not just us, but everyone.

We haven't yet done everything we're planning to do. Here's some of what's still outstanding, and will be coming in phase 2.

1. Error reporting. Hopefully you won't get any, but when this is implemented, you will get an email saying exactly what went wrong with the conversion.

2. Notification when movies are finished with their high quality conversion.

3. Progress bar when uploading isn't working.

4. High quality encoding of uploads from within the Moviestorm client isn't working (we don't think!). We're not sure why! It does go through local encoding fine, however...

Once again, thanks for your help.