Thanks for the great info. Thinking about the different formats as containers makes sense. And I'm sure there are advantages/disadvantages to the different containers. I know I more commonly have problems watching streaming wmv video than quicktime video, even on Windows PCs. They commonly just stop in the middle of the stream and won't rebuffer. Quicktime files online rarely have that problem.

So since you could save a MPEG4 encoded file within a .mov container, or within an .avi container, does that mean that a file saved as .mp4 has no container?


That was actually the first thing we tried. Windows Movie Maker couldn't import the file (not surprisingly) and even Quicktime player couldn't play it (surprisingly). I didn't export the file though, I just dragged it out of iMovie as a .dv clip and over to his laptop.