Compressing Video

[TomRainking]

I have a lot of video files on my cpu of all different formats...i.e. asf, avi, mpg...I was wondering which of the video file formats has the smallest size, without compromising too much quality. Also, is there a program that will convert my current files to a new smaller size?

[CCSDUDE]

www.divx.com
www.divxdigest.com
www.DVDRhelp.com
www.virtualdub.org

That should walk you through it. :wings

XviD compresses nicely...can fit a DVD quality movie (ripped from a DVD obviously...lol) on a 700meg CDR with little quality loss.

Divx is pretty much the same (look at Xvid in a mirror) except it went 'commerical' so the advanced features are only for people who don't mind spyware or are willing to shell out cash.

Next up you got plain ol' Mpeg4 (divx/xvid) except in a Mircosoft flavor...

Almost all the mpeg4 codecs are the same so stick to the two main ones listed above...

Also compress the audio! Ac3 is great but mp3 will do you just fine at 160kbs (96 VBR if you wanna up the quality of the video).

Check out the bitrate calculators on divxdigest and dvdrhelp to figure out what bitrate to encode audio an vidoe...

And umm oh yeah...lol Whatever size you want... IE 701 megs..on a CDR make sure you round at least 10 megs DOWN and select that as the bitrate. Else you may end up with a bigger file based on the fact that it can't really predict exactly what the size will be. If it's way below 700...who cares...set it at whatever you want and go.

[Krypt0]

http://www.doom9.org/
[The definitive DVD backup resource]

[phalkon30]

I'd also suggest if you're looking for codecs, get the Full K-lite Codec pack. It has all the authoring codecs you'd ever want, plus a ton to play it back with.

www.freecodecs.com