I have a lot of videos I would like to embed into an app, and am currently just streaming them using an UIWebView browser I set up.
I know there are formats available to email videos, where videos can be like 6 mb or less.
What is the best way to do this for an iphone app.
Keeping the quality of the picture to some extent with smaller file sizes.
thanks
The file format (or container) is not the one who gives the file size, but the bitrate of the video stream, when compressing. Since you're going to use these for an iPhone app, I would go with .mov since it's Apple's proprietary format.
As for compression, it isn't really a topic that can be explained in one post, but long story short, the bitrate must be chosen according to the resolution of the video that's being compressed. Go for an h264 multi-pass encoding, and start with a bitrate of 1000 kbps and see if you're satisfied with the results, and keep pushing the bitrate lower and lower, until you get the most satisfying results with the lowest file size. It's really just a matter of fining the right balance, so it's going to take a few tries.
For audio, use AAC with a sample rate of 44.1 KHz and a bitrate of 128kbps if there is music in the audio, or a sample rate of 32KHz and a bitrate of 96kbps which is pretty decent for when there's only voice/narration, or even lower, as long as you're happy with the results.
I explained this process in an answer for a similar question - you can read it here.
Hope this helps ! :)