recommended family video sharing website and file size reduction methods

[buyabook]

Hello,

I recently ripped about 36 tapes of hi8 video to my computter's hard drive in dv-avi. Each 2 hour video file takes up around 30 gigs. What is the recommended way to shrink the size of the file's and share it with my friends and family online? Whats a good website for this?

[smrpix]

You should seriously consider making a half-hour or so highlight reel. Nobody is going to watch 72 hours of home movies -- even the people who are in them.

Then encode to mp4 at 640x480 about 2400-3600 mbs and upload to YouTube or Vimeo.

[_Al_]

oh, you need to share it on-line, nevermind, something like above post then ...

[buyabook]

what can i use to encode to mp4?

[smrpix]

Among the free options -- handbrake, mpegstreamclip, x264 encoder, ffmpeg, avidemux, many, many others. Most editing software will let you export to mp4 directly.

[buyabook]

I am revisiting this project after a year. I am no longer concerned with sharing these file online but I'd like to play it on my Samsung Smart TV (UN65H6350) via network connection. I am already able to play divx videos on my smart tv through the network. When I try to play the captured video files on my TV, it says that the format is incompatible. Now that I have 30 Gig files, what would be the next step in editing the files and what format should I convert to in order to play it on my Smart TV. Is there an established guide on the internet that has the steps I need to follow in order to do this?