Codecs R US
 

Ok, there are tons of threads on here about different codecs/encoders that are used. What's your favorite?

Personally I use H.264 exported from Quicktime for the most part. Sometimes I also go with ProRes out of MPEG Streamclip if I am using it with Final Cut. The main thing for me is to get the file size down while still maintaining high quality (the great compromise).

Completely depends on what the final destination for viewing is.

lets say it's for web? should have mentioned that.

For me it's Cineform as an intermediate, and h.264 for final distribution. I'd consider ProRes, but I'm on the PC.

h.264 is great, but on the other hand, I produced a Blu-ray disc for IEC last year (the TV power measurement standard, 62087), and chose MPEG-2. At the time, high-quality MPEG-2 encoders were widely available that could push the maximum bitrate of a blu-Ray disc. The MPEG-4 AVC encoders available to me at the time either weren't able to encode at the highest supported rates, or had compatibility issues. For quality, compatibility, release schedule, and budget, I punted and went with MPEG-2.

Hopefully, there are inexpensive h.264 encoders that can reliably squeeze every bit from blu-Ray discs today.

For delivery on the web today then it's H.264 MPEG4 without a doubt. This CODEC is a great combination of very high quality & small file size. The downside is that decoding videos in this format for playback is pretty CPU intensive but shouldn't be a problem with any modern computer. Quicktime on the Mac does a fantastic job with H.264 you can just dial in the desired output size/quality & it automagically works. I am sure that there are similar applications for the Windows world. Whereas MPEG2 requires an awful lot of hand-crafted tweaking to get the best results with H.264 you can just let the application get on with it. For web output up to 10Mbps the Elgato Turbo.264 HD USB dongle at $150 does a great job of off-loading the work to a dedicated processor & enables output files to be created much faster than real time with exceptional quality.