The problem is not just the codec, the problem is the codec and the
container (which is also sometimes confusingly called "format"):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_container[
^].
Now, with HTML5, the real problem is not the codec+container, the problem is the choice of combination which is supposed to be supported on most systems. This is really a problem, because, unfortunately, "the current HTML5 draft specification does not specify which video formats browsers should support":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video#Supported_video_formats[
^].
To me, it looks like these days it would be most practical to use WebM, but, by apparent reasons, I cannot be 100% sure. Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebM[
^],
http://www.webmproject.org/[
^],
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP8[
^],
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP9[
^].
Or it could be Ogg Theora:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theora[
^],
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_Ogg_formats_in_HTML5[
^],
http://www.theora.org/[
^].
So, just in case, get ready to be able to re-master your media clips as situation and trends change.
The best remastering/trans-coding and most portable tool available these days, I think, would be FFMpeg or libavcodec, related open-source libraries and utilities. So far, I was able to solve all the problems related to media, sometimes even quite tricky which I could not solve using anything else. Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ffmpeg[
^],
http://ffmpeg.org/[
^],
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libavcodec[
^],
http://libav.org/[
^].
—SA
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