I need to shrink an mpeg file

[lordhutt]

I have an mpeg file I need to shrink so I can fit it on one of those business card cd's....(along with a couple of other files)

The mpeg is 5:24 long and about 49 meg.
I need to take about 10 meg off of it.
Can I do this without a whole lot of quality loss?

Thanks for any help.

-Andy

[ZippyP.]

10 / 49 = 0.2 or about a 20 % drop in quality. Also, every time that video is re-encoded there will be a quality loss. So, try it and see...it may be good enough for you.

TMPGEnc is an mpeg encoder, free for mpeg1 and 30 day trial for mpeg2.

[Sabro]

I've heard AShampoo has a product called Shrink and Burn and its supposted to be pretty decent. Never used it myself so please don't quote me on that, but you might want to check it out at www.ashampoo.com


Sabro

[jimmalenko]

Basically you need to re-encode. As ZippyP mentioned, each re-encode drops quality, so it would be better if you could encode to MPEG-1 from the source material as opposed to re-encoding the MPEG file you have.

Essentially all you need to do to lower the size is lower the bitrate. All things being equal, this will result in lesser quality if you do not use the original footage. I normally start with lowering the audio bitrate to 128. The real size saving will come in lowering your video bitrate though. Use the bitrate calculator here in advanced mode and input your running time, audio bitrate and target size. This will tell you what video bitrate to use. Then use TMPGEnc Free to encode. Depending on the type of movie, you might want to consider 2-Pass VBR if quality is a big issue. I normally use the average from the bitrate calculator, then +/- 50% for the min and max.

[akumar]

Try ISOBUSTER

Basically you need to re-encode. As ZippyP mentioned, each re-encode drops quality, so it would be better if you could encode to MPEG-1 from the source material as opposed to re-encoding the MPEG file you have.

Essentially all you need to do to lower the size is lower the bitrate. All things being equal, this will result in lesser quality if you do not use the original footage. I normally start with lowering the audio bitrate to 128. The real size saving will come in lowering your video bitrate though. Use the bitrate calculator here in advanced mode and input your running time, audio bitrate and target size. This will tell you what video bitrate to use. Then use TMPGEnc Free to encode. Depending on the type of movie, you might want to consider 2-Pass VBR if quality is a big issue. I normally use the average from the bitrate calculator, then +/- 50% for the min and max.