How can i shrink the size of a ripped m2v file?

[THEXFILES]

i use smart ripper and pull vidoe's off as a m2v file , but they are huge.....like a 5 minute video is about 300 meg when done,i finally got the audio wave from about 60 meg down to 6 meg by turning it into ac3 audio , now if i can shrink that m2v file i can get more video's on my home dvd project. how can i shrink it so it will still be able to be used in tmpg dvd author or dvd mfactory?......thanks

[Tommyknocker]

You could lower the bitrate withTMPGEnc.

[THEXFILES]

ok i just checked one and the video bit rate was auto set at 8000 , how far can i drop the bit rate without loss of picture quality?

[ZippyP.]

You could lower the bitrate withTMPGEnc.

That's one way. M2V is an mpeg2 video file and you can re-encode it at a lower bitrate to make it smaller. Depending on how low you want to go, you may need to lower the resolution as well. If your clip is full DVD resolution then you can drop it to 1/2 DVD or 352X480, drop the bitrate in half (3,000 kb/s maybe)and it will still look good.

I'm not a DVDshrink expert but you may be able to use it to reduce your file. Anyone?

[ZippyP.]

ok i just checked one and the video bit rate was auto set at 8000 , how far can i drop the bit rate without loss of picture quality?

If you go to 6,000 it will still look good, and be reduced to 3/4 size. If you need it smaller then see my previous post.

[THEXFILES]

zippyp------your the man !!!! my first rip video and audio combined was 340 megs(m2v at 8000 bitrate video ,audio wave.......converted thewave file to ac3 and then did what you said i dropped the bitrate to 4000 and the total video after running it thru tmpg plus was only 129 meg, the video and audio looks just as good as the first one i did.............thanks again

[ZippyP.]

........thanks again

My pleasure.