How to encode your video to a format, that can be played by most browsers?
You can use FFmpeg to encode your videos correctly. In this example the original video format is mp4, but it could be a different file format too.
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Step 1
Download FFmpeg for Windows.
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Step 2
Unzip it to your computer, then enter its /bin folder. You should see a similar folder structure to this:
C:/ffmpeg[build details]/bin/
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Step 3
Insert your original video into this bin folder and rename it to original.mp4:
C:/ffmpeg[build details]/bin/original.mp4
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Step 4
Create a bat file in this folder. Let's call it encode.bat:
C:/ffmpeg[build details]/bin/encode.bat
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Step 5
You should write this code into the bat file:
ffmpeg -i original.mp4 -vcodec h264 -an -strict -2 new.mp4
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Step 6
Run the bat file. It should start running the code you entered. After it is done, a new.mp4 file should appear in your folder:
C:/ffmpeg[build details]/bin/new.mp4
This is the new video, which can be played in most browsers.
Additional options
There are multiple options offered by FFmpeg to work with your videos.
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Resizing the video
The following code resizes the video to 1920*1080px.
ffmpeg -i original.mp4 -vf scale=1920:1080 -vcodec h264 -an -strict -2 new.mp4
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First 10 seconds
Cut out the first 10 seconds, next to this resizing ( -ss is the start, -t is the end time in seconds):
ffmpeg -ss 0 -i original.mp4 -vf scale=1920:1080 -t 10 -vcodec h264 -an -strict -2 new.mp4
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Create an image from the first frame
ffmpeg -i original.mp4 -vf scale=1920:1080 -vframes 1 firstframe.jpg