Why is my AVI file so HUGE?

[ShriekingMonkey]

I have a Sony DCR-HC32 Handycam and have been transferring video to my PC via a VCR through a video capture card using MovieMill. I ended up with a 2 minute, 3MB MPEG video clip. I finally bought a firewire card and connection and made the transfer to a DV AVI file (which I assumed would be much smaller) using Windows MovieMaker. Instead, I ended up with a 2 minute, 310MB AVI video clip. It's way better quality than the MPEG, but I want to make a teeny tiny file I can e-mail out. Any tips on how I can shrink this file?

[junkmalle]

DV AVI is about 13 GB/hr, or 215 MB/min. Use WMM's "send in email" option. It'll look like crap but it will be small enough to email.

[jimmalenko]

I generally use "My Computer" (or whatever it's called ) and then use either the High Quality video (large) or High Quality video (small) template. These use VBR and output at either 640 x 480 (large) or 320 x 240 (small).

[thecoalman]

You can also download MS's Media Encoder from there site, it's a little more robust in the options it has than Movie Maker. In either MM or the encoder you have to pick a profile or create one for what you want , the presets are labled accordingly.

If your going to e-mail the clip be aware that most mail servers will bounce e-mails with large file sizes. You ISP probably provides space for you to upload to there server, I'd suggest going that route.