Video compression help

delta555 · 28 May 2006 at 16:52

I have a video file which i have exported as dv avi from adobe premiere which is only 3:40 mins long, but 800 megs. I want to compress this down, but virtualdub is not able to open the file. I have tried in premiere to compress it, but every time i try i get artifacts. Can anybody tell me a good codec pack for virtualdub, or what settings to use, or point me in the direction of a good tutorial?

bledd · 28 May 2006 at 18:33

hmm, i'm not familiar with filetypes coming from premiere, can you export it as uncompressed avi? vdub should be able to handle that with no problems..

rickyt · 28 May 2006 at 20:29

Yes, the .avi format will take up the most disk space ,I recently had a 5min DV avi file that was 1.3gig , they certainly eat away at the hard drive.You can re-size it [ 320 x 240 for instance ] convert it to a .wvm or convert it to mpeg format mpg1 [VCD ] or mpg2 [DVD] . This will reduce file size. I would normally import the DV file into a editing program such as Pinnacle or Serif Movie Plus and export it to the desired format or in the case of Pinnacle write directly to a DVD.A good codec I've used for a long time is the Huffy one .

Energize · 28 May 2006 at 21:59

rickyt said:
Yes, the .avi format will take up the most disk space ,I recently had a 5min DV avi file that was 1.3gig , they certainly eat away at the hard drive.You can re-size it [ 320 x 240 for instance ] convert it to a .wvm or convert it to mpeg format mpg1 [VCD ] or mpg2 [DVD] . This will reduce file size. I would normally import the DV file into a editing program such as Pinnacle or Serif Movie Plus and export it to the desired format or in the case of Pinnacle write directly to a DVD.A good codec I've used for a long time is the Huffy one .

Mpeg 4 .avi is much smaller than wmv, and mpeg2 is worse than both of them. Also reducing the resolution doesnt reduce the file size, just the quality unless your using a quality based setting, filesize is totally dependant on the bitrate.

Download the klite mega codec pack and then virtual dub should work with it. Compress the file using xvid with an avi format container.

What you should do in the future is import video from the dv cam using virtual dub, then you can compress, de-interlace add filters etc all on the fly, so you dont have to convert it again.