Video files too large!

June 4, 2007 7:42 AM

I need help with video compression...

I have made some small movies with my Canon digital camera. I believe they are 640x480 in .avi format, and appear to be totally uncompressed, as they are huge (100+ megs/minute). I've read some of the previous answers here about using tools like virtualdub and such, but these are so complicated and well beyond what I need to do.

All I want to do is make the video smaller in disk size, but I still want for most people to be able to view them with their DivX codecs.

Is there just some simple little program that will do this for me?

Many thanks.

posted by eas98 to computers & internet (13 answers total)

Are you having a specific problem with VirtualDub? I've never looked further than VirtualDub when doing this sort of thing as it is pretty much ideal for the task.

You might try Windows Movie Maker, which comes with XP. I think it only really encodes to wmv, though, so I feel kind of dirty even offering this as advice.
posted by zixyer at 7:52 AM on June 4, 2007

Well, I was just overwhelmed with VirtualDub. There were dozens of options and I couldn't find a clear way to just do what I wanted.

If you could give me some simple instructions for it, I'd appreciate it as well. :)
posted by eas98 at 8:21 AM on June 4, 2007

I can give you instructions, but I don't have access to it right now. Sorry if this is vague or I got the menus mixed up.

First you open your video file. Then choose video/compression. Pick the codec that you want (best would be your MPEG-4 codec, DivX or xvid). Go to the codec options and choose a bitrate. You'll need to experiment with this to get the proper quality/file size tradeoff that you're going for, but maybe you can start off at around 300kbps. You can also pick one pass or two pass encoding here. Two pass is better, but it takes much longer to encode.

Next, go to the audio menu and pick full processing mode. Then go to Audio/codec -- you probably want to pick MP3. Choose a bitrate similarly, you probably want around 44khz at 128kbps.

If you picked two-pass encoding, do file/run video analysis pass. Finally, do file/save as avi.
posted by zixyer at 8:31 AM on June 4, 2007

Here are some useful tutorials for encoding video with virtual dub. The only real change you have to do is select divx (or xvid) for the codec and mp3 for the sound. Say 750kbps for video (1pass) and 64kbit/sec for sound.
posted by damn dirty ape at 8:49 AM on June 4, 2007

this piece of software converts and compress from and to nearly any file format.

And... it's free !
posted by Baud at 9:09 AM on June 4, 2007

FWIW, your Canon definitely compresses the 640x480 AVI movies it stores. Uncompressed 640x480 would fill up a 1 GB card in only a few minutes. Take this into consideration as you contemplate recompression schemes. I assume you're using Windows; if you were using a Mac, I could be more helpful with application options.
posted by squirrel at 9:38 AM on June 4, 2007

I was just having problems with this myself! I will watch this thread closely.
posted by parilous at 9:51 AM on June 4, 2007

By the way, the footage you have isn't uncompressed. Uncompressed is 1gig=1min. It's like DV or some other similar compression. About 200megs/min.
posted by filmgeek at 10:22 AM on June 4, 2007

I use Windows Movie Maker, it's in the Applications tool bar. I cut all my digital camera .AVIs in here, add subtitles, music, and then encode to .wmv. All my videos are uploaded to YouTube for the final audience, which makes videos look horrible, so I see as the limiting factor and don't care about much else I can make a video in about 5 minutes with this pretty good little program. This answer, is of course, geared towards the non-quality crowd.
posted by sled at 10:39 AM on June 4, 2007

Is there an echo in here, filmgeek? ;^)

This is the likely format that your AVI is saved in: OpenDML JPEG, 640 x 480, Millions of colors; Audio is 8-bit Unsigned Integer, Mono, 11.024 kHz.

Bad news on the video codec: it will recompress, but it's really lossy. It's also probably 15 fps, so unless you're importing it into an editor to chop up and mess around with, I would recommend saving space on your export by staying with 15 fps. There is no benefit to bumping it up to 30 fps, and doing so will double your file size.
posted by squirrel at 10:45 AM on June 4, 2007

Short answer: www.media-convert.com

Long Answer:
I doubt a digicam records uncompressed video, but that's neither here nor there.

I'm a big fan of using a simple website to do this, no software required. media-convert.com is definitely the easiest tool you're looking for. All you need to do is specify some compression options.

Frames. this is the # of images per second the video shows. I believe if you leave it blank it will match the original video.
All data / split. Leave on all data unless you only want to convert a portion of your file.
Resize. Also leave this empty to keep your current dimensions.
Audio codec. Choose mp3, pcm will result in a much larger file size.
Audio quality. Choose 128k, even though that is probably higher quality than what you're starting with. The difference in file sizes you'd get with the different options in this category is negligible unless your videos are more than a few minutes long.
Video quality. You may need to play with this a couple times to find what right for what you want, as this is the most important factor for determining how large the file will result. But a good number to start with would be 700 probably.
Video codec. Choose mpeg4. If you want to know more about the other two options, go for it. But use mpeg4.
FOURCC Header. Obviously choose DIVX since that's what you want it to be recognized as.
posted by GrubbyUtter at 11:08 AM on June 4, 2007

Oh, and I forgot to add - that website uploads the video and you can choose to make it available for a couple weeks in case you want to send the download link to friends. Do I sound like I work for them yet?? Hah. I don't, but I do use it a lot. It's not as amazing as 2-pass xvid conversions with virtualdub or anything, but it's quick and easy and great for the type of video you're working with.
posted by GrubbyUtter at 11:17 AM on June 4, 2007

Thanks for all the great answers. I will play around with some things and see what I can get working.

I appreciate all the responses.
posted by eas98 at 1:09 PM on June 4, 2007