I want to check that users will be able to encode the main video formats using FFMPEG running on a server. So far most of the videos I have tried have worked but want to find out where things may fall down. Is there a good list and hopefully attached files to download showing the main video formats for video that users will find online and will take with video cameras or create with popular home video editing apps?
Any suggestions?
You could possibly create your own library by taking a video and running it through a converter such as TMPENG and saving out the various formats and testing those.
The TVersity Media Server has a setting in it to "force" the media server to use ffmpeg to encode ... Then, connect to the media server on its high port (50,000 something) I'd look into that. It would be an easy way to test. Then, drop in a bunch of different video files into a shared folder and see how they do. (TVersity doesn't include the matroska codec... install that separately).
Video cameras "usually" shoot in some sort of RAW mode I think and so compatability is good due to lack of compression. There are "some" video cameras, like the cheaper point and shoots, that take compressed video. I'd say Wikipedia might have a list of cameras and their codecs?