You have just completed editing the hours of home videos with your video editing software and want to share it with your friends and family. There are various ways to get those file formats you can save your videos in, but which one is best for your specific situation? Here's some quick advice about which export option is best to use under various circumstances.

FLV
This format is a version of Flash. It is a relatively new file format that is quickly gaining popularity because of YouTube and other online resources. This is one of the most commonly accepted online formats since it has streaming and a progressive download option. More people have Flash installed than any other player so people are more likely to be able to play this file format. This works on any device that has Flash, from computers to handhelds.

MPEG-4
This is the standard defined by the Moving Picture Experts Group. It’s supported by a variety of players, including Apple’s QuickTime. This format allows for interactive video and added media components. They have good quality and yet retain a small file size. These files can be played on the iPod, PSP and mobile phones with video support.

AVI
This is short for audio video interleave and is the Windows standard video file format. It is supported by all computers running Windows and by the most popular web browsers. While it is a common format on the internet it is not always playable on non-Windows computers. Which codec you use will determine whether the computer can play the files. This type of format it good for PCs and for uploading to YouTube, MySpace and Google Video.

WMV
Microsoft developed the WMV format. It is commonly found on the internet but requires an extra component to play on computers that don’t have Windows. Some of the videos with this extension can’t be played at all because there isn’t a player available for the particular codec. This file format is good for the PC or other devices with a Mobile Windows OS.

MOV
This is a container format so there are various codecs you can use to compress the video and audio. This Apple-specific format requires QuickTime to play the files. The type of codec you use will determine the file size and the quality of the video. Since it only works on QuickTime it limits the number of people who can view the video.

RealVideo
RealNetworks developed this format specifically for the internet. The upside of this format is that it works well streaming on low bandwidth, but because of that the quality is often lower than other formats. You also have to install extra software to play these media files. This file format is the most restrictive of the six we've listed when it comes to playing video on various devices.

Which file format you choose will ultimately depend on how you want to get your latest video out to people, but as a general rule you should probably choose one of the formats that isn’t limited to a specific OS or that needs an obscure player.

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