H.264 vs. FLV for best quality?
 

I've been doing a lot of comparisons lately. If anybody would like to discuss this topic, we can start a dialog.

In general, H.264 is a bear to encode, and I'm not entirely convinced the effort is worth the reward. We are talking about STREAMING video, after all. If a truly "high quality" copy of the video must be provided, I'm starting to think DVDs by mail is still the best way for this.

FLV is fast to encode and looks decent, like a VHS tape.

It's a definite trade of quality vs speed. But which one provides the best return on investment? (ROI)

I know this is old-ish, but this applied then anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flv#Media_type_support

FLV is just a container format.

Yes, very true.

The actual codec that was used in those tests was the standard On2 VP6 that is standard among most FLV-contained files. In fact, it's because most all FLVs have On2 VP6 that the video encoding specs and the container have become more or less synonymous.

H.264, on the other hand, is usually found in FLV, F4V, MKV and MP4 containers. It's more varied in use.