Video Compression

[La Flames Fan]

Need a little CP help.

I want to compress a 33MB .MPEG to a .MOV, but can't seem to find the fine line of making the video smaller, yet maintaining good quality.

Anyone know of tricks, software, settings that would help?

Thanks!

[BlackEleven]

I've used VirtualDub to compress video to divx format, but then you'll end up with an avi not an mov. You may be able to create mov with it as well if you have the right codecs installed, I'm not 100% sure. VirtualDubMod is a popular modified version that adds a few features, it may be worth checking that out as well.

In general, I would recommend checking out www.doom9.org. You can find a wealth of information there about video encoding in the Guides section and lots of links to good, free software in the Software section.

[La Flames Fan]

Thanks for the help, I'll definitely check those out....

I've heard of that doom9, maybe I'll look deeper into that.

Cheers

[Bobblehead]

Originally Posted by La Flames Fan

Thanks for the help, I'll definitely check those out....

I've heard of that doom9, maybe I'll look deeper into that.

Cheers

doom9 can be a bit heavy and technical (actually, not "can be", "IS") but there are definitely people there that can help.

[La Flames Fan]

Cool, while I am relatively savvy in the techno-babble but somethings are beyond my comprehension..Thanks for the heads up.

[Hack&Lube]

The thing is that mov as a format is a not an especially efficient format for compressed video.

Use some other format like WMV or Divx, Xvid, Matrosky, etc. What are you compressing this video for?

The tool you need is Virtualdub and one of the big codec packs. Virtualdub is easy to use once you have the right codecs.

[La Flames Fan]

Using it for an actor's reel to go online. So obiously the look of the video is important, but a smaller file size would be preferred.

In previous times I used .flv, but it's stability was inconsistent (meaning it just wouldn't play sometimes). I've never really used .wmv, is there anything technically difficult with that particular format or does Window Media Player sort of do the work for if a file is uploaded?

Thanks!