It has come to my attention that professionals are considering delivering their wedding videos on flash media. This idea neglects the lack of a standardized codec that will play on any device. And in this oversight they prematurely report that optical media is dead. Thank you, Apple for creating delusion. I get it, really I do. The DVD will die someday and the Blu-ray market is stagnant. But, I do not see flash media as the answer, especially if your argument is that everything is going portable. I see two flash media options with the most compatibility: a USB fob or an SD card. Neither is going to be as fool proof as a disc. I have a phone that can play videos, but it lacks a card slot AND it does not have a full size USB. Even with an adaptor, I doubt that it has the ability to host a USB drive. Additionally, I have a tablet, which came with both USB and an SD slot; many are without one or both. The SD takes a micro and the USB is not full size. Yesterday,I loaded a card with an MPEG2 to show on the tablet. Nothing. I needed VLC to view the file and when it finally did work it stuttered. In order to access your videos you need more than a tablet and a phone (I know people that only own these). How about your entertainment system? That USB port on my TV is full sized, but it is only for service. My receiver has a media port, but that is not a standard household item. Many DVD/Bluray players do have a media port, but I have found this to be a very picky device. It fails to recognize my 320 GB passport drive. Many of the codecs are not available on the set top player and they cannot be added. The larger files that do work often stutter and freeze. We are left with a computer. Do you really want to relive your wedding on your computer? Can you and your spouse crowd around the screen and enjoy the memories in its 15 – 24” splendor? To have it on your phone or tablet you have to copy it over and trust that the files will scale properly. What about chapters or controls? Your video professional can create a web DVD and it offers the same functionality, but the web DVD is Flash encoded so the Mac users would be out of luck. The fragility of flash media is also a concern. My failure rate for SD and USB media is almost embarrassing; one bump and you break the stick.
After all this thought, I strongly advocate for supplying customer with either DVD or Blu-ray. The optical media is still the video answer for the time being. For the progressive client, offer a cloud download in a format compatible with their specific devices. The cloud is the future for video and offering any intermediary format is just going to inhibit future use and access. All this aside, I think we are forgetting the days when videographers had to include known working DVD players in their packages. We cannot offer known working phones and tablets as part of our packages and be cost effective. We have to be able to offer our clients an array of encoded files that fit their needs.