video file size reduction

July 8, 2005 9:26 PM

video file size reduction

looking for a good app that can easily change a 350 MB video file down to about 250MB. i'm finding that a collection of vids are often exactly the wrong size to fit them all onto a single dvd. and usually only by a hundred or so meg.
i'd like this to work with plenty of formats - avi, mpeg, and others if possible.
and freeware would be the best thing ever, but i'll take any suggestions.
cheers

posted by hayeled to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

The gold standard is mencoder, from the mplayer project. It'll play nearly anything and convert it to AVI. You have to have some command line foo though.

http://oss.netfarm.it/mplayer-win32.php
http://oss.netfarm.it/mplayer/builds/mencoder-p4-cvs-20050709.zip

I'd love to recommend VLC, but its AVI output code is too sketchy. MPlayer's is rock solid.

Some documentation for mplayer/mencoder:

http://axljab.homelinux.org/Mencoder_DVD_to_MPEG-4
posted by effugas at 9:38 PM on July 8, 2005

I think this page might help:

Video Help
posted by gnash at 9:39 PM on July 8, 2005

I've used a couple versions of VirtualDub(free), with mixed results. If you stick with free stuff, maybe even using commercial products, the various audio and video codecs can give you a little headache. I've found it also takes a while.. my machine isn't brand spanking new, but I'd rather lose 100MB off a DVD than wait for encoding.

If the files don't have to be immediately accessable, ou could use .rar archives, and if you don't care exactly what goes on the disc, Burn to the Brim.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 11:20 PM on July 8, 2005

Cleaner XL has a free 30 day trial.
posted by kenchie at 12:46 AM on July 9, 2005

if the difference is 100mb.... don't do it.

I know, you want to fit the entire series etc, onto a single DVD.

But DVD's are really cheap (< $1).br>
Taking a heavily compressed item and recompressing it...well, will only make it look worse.

You wouldn't take a series of really compressed jpegs, compress them further, just to fit them on a storage medium (because CDs+DVDs are cheap.) Why do it with video Media?
posted by filmgeek at 3:41 AM on July 9, 2005

I'll second VirtualDub, it's my standard now for doing exactly what you're talking about. There's a learning curve at first, but it's not too bad to get the basics down (although I'm aware that I don't know how to use a lot of the higher level features it has). It handles .avi and .mpg, and if you find an older version it will convert from .asf as well (1.3c I think was the last version to do this, I use both 1.3c and whatever the newest is). I also use TMPGenc for converting from .wmv and other formats that VirtualDub can't manipulate into .mpg.
posted by Who_Am_I at 7:02 AM on July 9, 2005

The only "good" way of doing this is to use tools that work in the compression domain. They work quickly and the results are approximately as good as you'd get if you had the source material and compressed it to your desired bit-rate in one step.

I used one that worked well for MPEG2 a couple years ago. I think it was ReJig. I also came across another one that seems to work similarly. I've seen mention of something called 'requant' sounds like it does the same thing.

I don't know if there are any available for the MPEG4 variants used for most of the AVIs that circulate on the net. I certainly didn't find any in the searching I did.
posted by Good Brain at 2:58 PM on July 9, 2005