For holiday gift I was thinking of making USB/microSDs full of TV/movies. The intended recipients are not tech savvy types. They would be using windows computers, normal TVs etc.
What kind of file formats/encodings would be good to package the files in? What is safe and universally usable? And which ones are to be avoided? I’d like to guarentee they’ll play without any fooling around with drivers or software.
And I want them to be as small as possible so that I can fit more stuff.
Maybe a little out of topic, but make sure you know what they like.
Everybody likes homemade porn.
I’m mostly echoing what’s already been said, but I have a preset in Handbrake for this, which works fine on most TVs I’ve tried from the last 10 years (possibly 15 by now) and therefore should have no problem running on any computer. I often (for work reasons) prepare video footage for looped playback on TVs and projectors at numerous places - so “TVs I’ve tried” is a larger number than it might initially sound like.
It’s roughly along these lines (as I appear to have emailed someone about before):
"H264 mp4. 1920x1080. 25 or 30fps, or similar (appropriate to source material). Constant bitrate <=12mbps. 8mbps is generally universally compatible, though you should be able to get away with 10-12mbps on newer TVs with newer USB sticks.
AAC audio 192kbps, though lower is fine.
Use same samplerate as source (i.e. 44khz 48khz etc)
If you’ve got settings for encoding profile, Main and Level 4.0 should work.
If individual files are small enough (<4GB), format the USB stick as FAT32. Otherwise NTFS. EXT2 will work on a lot of TVs, but you’ll have trouble with some computers. Exfat may work on newest tellys, but won’t on anything more than a few years old, so safe option is not to use it."
Wait… older tvs support ntfs but not exfat? What bizarro world are we living in?
Depends haevily on the manufacturer.
But for me it was pretty much everything in mp4 (and newer probably also can do mkv) in H.264.I’d avoid H.265, with the exception for very new and fancy tvs (usually OLEDs and higher end TVs from >2018.
Never do AV1.Also keep in mind, that not every audio-codec has support.
Try to go stereo or (I think AC3)..mp4 with H264: the most universal, and can be compressed to smaller sizes than you might think. Compatibility and compression will still vary depending if you use AAC or opus audio
.webm with VP9 and opus audio: better compression, not as universal. More open-standards based, maybe best balance of compression and compatibility
.mp4 or webm with AV1 and opus audio: probably best compression, also probably less compatibility than VP9, maybe depends what devices they use - good on new computers / phones / Android based TVs, more iffy on a wider or older range of devives. MP4 maybe friendlier than webm on newish Apple devices
as others have mentioned mp4 with h264 is almost certainly the most compatible. that being said, I transcode everything to hevc if I can’t get it natively, and never have issues. my server literally cannot transcode. it does not have a GPU, and hevc plays natively on every target device I need. even works in browsers these days.
most people will still say h264 is best. but if you’re limited on storage space or want to optimize streaming bitrate hevc works wayyy better than it did even just 1 or 2 years ago.
what has been the location of improvement?
I’ve found x265 is pretty universally supported in 2025. I’ve switched all of my downloads for Plex over to 265 and none of my users have reported issues. My users are not particularly tech savvy and have a ton of diversity in their devices from cheap ass smart TVs, to consoles, to various mobile devices and computers.
I think it’s fairly safe to start getting everything in 265 and the space savings is significant. Very easy to get 4K HDR rips that look great for only 5-7 GB. HD rips can easily be 1-2 GB.
Include VLC if you need a player, but again I’ve found nearly everything plays 265 these days. It’s not nearly the compatibility issue it was years ago.
MP4 container, 265 video (w/ HDR10 layer if appropriate), Dolby digital audio (w/ Atmos track if appropriate) is what I usually look for these days for a balance of compatibility and quality.
I’ve found x265 is pretty universally supported in 2025
Keep in mind, that most folks may still have their 30-40" TVs from the early 2010s…
They can do H.265 but will seriously struggle with a higher bitrate
The safest format I can think off would probably be mp4, with h264 for video streams and mp3 for audio streams. Unless you go for ancient technology basically anything should be able to open those files.
My old LG SmartTV seems most reliable at playing mkv files but I think mp4 is pretty standard.
mkv and mp4 are the container not the codec. It’s a bit more complicated than just the file extension. You likely have more luck with mkv because of just more consistency as mkv is used more often when the file is meant to be played locally and not streamed.
So, you’re right. But just looking at the container isn’t going to ensure compatibility. The codec is significantly more impactful on whether playback is supported. That’s the part that’s literally taking the compressed video data and decoding it into viewable pixels/frames you see on your screen.
I’ve never downloaded an mkv that wasn’t just standard h264 or h265. So it’s still a good bet. But h265 is less universal and much more CPU intensive for playback (because it has significantly better compression).
If the TV doesnt understand the container, it could be in mpeg-2 and it wouldnt run.
So better be safe and use mp4.
I’ve had better luck using MKV for my Samsung TV.
But yea, Mp4 is generally more compatible.
Same, I love mkv but most mainstream things just refuse to support it.
The only file format that pretty much 100% guarantees support on most media hardware is h.264 in MP4 containers. With some encoder tuning you can make them decently small without loss of fidelity; people will notice bad encoding more than they will a slight loss in pixels. I would focus on making a really high quality 720p copy of the shows ans batch encoding them with handbrake (or finding good encoded copies on the usual places)
It’s shocking how little resolution plays into quality. I’ve re-encoded some videos down to 480 and played them on a 65" TV and they look fine.
I can also make videos look terrible by just trying to save space by reducing the quality level of the conversion while retaining high resolution (1080).
Really depends on the content. Real life, recorded for TV, where there’s not a ton of in focus detail? Yea it doesn’t matter much. Documentary, videogame, or other content where they try to keep everything in focus? It can make a huge difference.
Though I tend to watch things on a high quality computer monitor, not a tv across the room, so details stand out a lot more in the first place.
This is why motion smoothing is turned on by default on most 4K TVs. It’s the only way most people can see any difference.
Yup. Close to lossless 480 will always look infinitely better than a poorly encoded 720/1080/4k. Compression blocks ruin images INSTANTLY.
Its why NTSC analog tv was always just Enough.
