Best Practices – Digital Asset Guidelines – Rev 4 www.autocare.org | www.autocarevip.com | technology@autocare.org 18 6. Video Best Practices 6.1 Overview The majority of businesses today are using or considering using video as a medium to market their products, services, brand, and/or company. Before spending the time and allocating the resources to producing videos, there are several issues to consider including: • Ensure that your target audience can view your videos: The main goal when creating and publishing video is to ensure that your target audience is able to view your videos whenever they want. In order to achieve this goal, you will need to produce video that can play in all commonly used browsers and on various devices. • Cross-browsers compatibility: Your target audience will be accessing your videos using a variety of browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera. They will also be running various versions of these browsers. • Variation in devices used to view video: Your target audience will be viewing your videos on a variety of devices including desktop and notebook computers, smartphones, and tablets. Devices play video differently. 6.2 The 3 Components of Video When creating and publishing video, it is important to understand the components that make up video. These include containers, video codecs, and audio codecs. Video Component Description Containers Video container formats define how to store things within them. Video Codecs Video player decodes the video stream according to the video codec. Audio Codecs Algorithms by which audio stream is encoded.