Moth3r said:
AVI, MP4 and MKV are neither formats nor codecs; they are all containers.
MPEG-4 Part 2 and MPEG-4 Part 10 (aka H.264) are formats.
A codec (encoder/decoder) is a software library such as Xvid or x264 (actually I think x264 is an encoder only, but you get the idea).
Yeah, I get that - sorry if it wasn't clear in my original post.
Thanks for all the ideas folks. I guess -1's 'blanket' approach is the only way to be sure (and certainly justified for a project of such importance). In order to make things a little more straightforward myself I'm leaning towards an H.264 derivative (MP4 or MKV) for uploading, with an old-fashioned DVD/BD disc for archival purposes.
Side question: for my SD project (ITV broadcast reconstruction) I'm wondering whether to make an AVCHD disc with the video encoded as 576p H.264. I'm thinking the quality benefits over MPEG-2 DVD should be apparent (particularly since the source is already MPEG-2), but since this doesn't seem a very common solution I'm wondering if there's some problem I've missed (other than limiting compatibility to Blu-ray players)?