Best settings for sharing to USB stick

I have a client who wants to put the video I produced for her on USB memory sticks. She wants to send them to people so they can play them on their computers.

I'd be really grateful if anyone could tell me the best settings for replaying a USB on a PC and retain as much of the quality as possible. It was shot on Canon C300's so I'm keen for that not to be "watered down".

It could be worse: she could demand DVD's!

720p WMV is what i would do, unless you knew there were potential viewers who have outdated hardware - in which case I would scale back to 480p.

You'll have to purchase Flip4Mac to get WMV export. Also format those USB thumb drives as FAT32. H.264 is pretty universal, also.

Hmmm...I delivered some MOV. files to a client on USB, both in 720p & 1080p. Neither worked on their PC computers. Kind of dumbfounded me, but I had also supplied them with DVD's which worked.

I had suggested they download VLC player, but they still had issues trying to play the files.

What is the best universal digital format???

Encode as H.264, but change the .mov to .m4v and see what happens.

stewpid wrote: I have a client who wants to put the video I produced for her on USB memory sticks. She wants to send them to people …

my son's soccer-reports I'm producing go to 14 parents - WindowsXP/7/8, Linux, MacOS, iOS, PS3, WDTV, Xbox .... so, my personal Universal Format:

• 720p, 5mbps as format = some older devices start to stumble by 10mbps
• h264 encoded = since YouTube the universal codec
• mp4 as wrapper = some are hesitant to install QT4Windows ....

most sticks are simply to slow to deliver high-quality encoded video; plus you never know what else occupies the same usb2 controller = would result in stutter.-

create your own Compressor preset with that or use MpegStreamclip

in case your project is 720p anyhow:

• Export a MasterFile
• Open with MpegStreamclip
• go straight to 'Save As' and select mp4 from dropdown

=> this is a 'seconds only' process, 'cause no useless, lossy transcoding happens, just a re-wrapping.

btw: just re-naming the suffix mov/m4v=>mp4 does NOT do the trick

Thanks for all the replies. I have an array of macs but not a single PC. It’s very frustrating having stuff work fine on any mac (oldest being a 2008 MBP) but then getting to the client and finding it just doesn’t play.

But I think this thread could be useful to others as DVDs make a slow exit (always hated their lack of speed and fragility) and USB sticks are so cheap. So I’ll plod on, trying the various suggestions, and report any progress I make. I’ll also try to list stuff that doesn’t.

Thanks again, guys.

I've personally had great success renaming an H.264 from .mov to .m4v on PCs. But mileage may vary.

If you need to do this on a regular basis, it may be worth investing in Flip4Mac (dot com) and simply export WMV files natively.

Just a quick update: MpegStreamclip worked fine on a newish PC. Just exported (shared) from FCPX to prores 422HQ, then into mpeg and export as mp4.

I need to try it on older PCs to see how they cope. The newish machine that played the file ok also played the original .mov file ok - which older machines didn't do, so all is not hunky dory quite yet. I'll report about the mp4 on older machines ASAP.

Thanks again for the replies.