Video Compression

[Ntrimgs]

I have a 3.5GB video in Quicktime that I need to upload to the server and make donwloadable on a website, but it's too darn big. Does anyone have any suggestions for good video compression that won't degrade the quality to an extreme and will allow the conversion to AVI or WMV.

[\\.\]

Avoid WMV

AVI is a container format which means you could have DivX or MPG video & audio or other codec of choice.

If anyone suggests FLV, please shoot them as it is nothing more than a container for MP4, FLV is nothing special.

As for compression, this will depend upon various quality factors and if you want the end user to be able to render to DVD.

So a little more info on who your trying to reach will be helpful to anyone wanting to follow this thread and offer their 2 cents worth.

[Ntrimgs]

Avoid WMV

AVI is a container format which means you could have DivX or MPG video & audio or other codec of choice.

If anyone suggests FLV, please shoot them as it is nothing more than a container for MP4, FLV is nothing special.

As for compression, this will depend upon various quality factors and if you want the end user to be able to render to DVD.

So a little more info on who your trying to reach will be helpful to anyone wanting to follow this thread and offer their 2 cents worth.


I don't need people to be able to render to a DVD with these videos. The videos are all about 20 minutes long and I need them to be around 200 - 300MB. I do have Adobe Premiere CS3 but it takes about 2 hours to render one of these clips. I was hoping there'd be something faster.

[\\.\]

The faster your CPU and the more memory you have, the quicker the job is.

What is the extension? Is it a .mov or is it something else that is encapsulating the Quicktime file?

You would be best searching for a transcoder to convert between formats.

You will find plenty of help on what to do in relation to resizing, compression and other factors that play a part in the final file size and how the compressor is optimized.

[Ntrimgs]

It's an MPEG-4

[\\.\]

Ok, MP4, like any codec, it will have settings that determine the way in which your resulting stream is rendered.

It sounds to me like your file has some compression on it, not much but some as completely uncompressed video streams are massive.

I suggest you look at this site http://www.virtualdub.org/ which will give you plenty of information about video and seek advice in the forum. I don't know if the MP4 extension is supported directly and VDub but it is supported if you have the MP4 codec installed as VDub you will find is not like other video software and only requires you have codecs installed on your machine and not to have to buy specific versions supporting certain codecs as some software vendors rip you of by. In the case of MPG codecs, you may have to buy an MPG codec license to give you the full range of settings as Microsoft limit the ability of your machine to do anything beyond playback. It snot VDub that limited, its the machine. VDub is different to other video processing software in many ways, the first and most obvious one being that it is completely free.

If you want to be unrestricted, I suggest you install Ubuntu (Linux) on a second partition. Not only is Linux faster at rendering video, you have none of the *ollocks of Micro$oft limiting your machines capability. Unfortunately VDub does not run under Linux, so I suggest a number of programs like WinFF and Mobile Media Converter which will offer the most reliability.

In relation to your video stream, what is its current settings? You don't say anything about them. This would help people who follow this thread with responses.

[criterion9]

You could try using Super (http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html)...it works much faster than Adobe on my machines.

[incredible1]

go to www.flvhosting.com/encoder
there is a free h264 encoder that will compress nicely
in mp4 hi def
you may need to try a couple of different settings to get what you want
www.flvhosting.com

[radbourn3]

MPEG-Streamclip really whips the llamas ass. It's free encoding software. FLV isn't bad by any means. It uses an On2 codec and they know their stuff. H.264 files all the way though. Can't beat em (though I'm toying with OGG theora at the moment and want to see how that matches up)