a few video editing questions

[randomguy]

hey guys, i'm kinda new to the whole video thing, here is a summary of what i have done and what i still need to do.. i've tried to figure it out myself but i get confused by the many different extension and technical thingies!!

i wanted to copy some vhs tapes to my computer, so i did it by hooking up my vhs player into a sony dvr dvd-200. i press play on the vhs and record on the cam and it records it onto a mini-dvd.

i copied the video files from the mini-dvd over onto my hard drive using imagemixer (a crappy program but the only one that seems to work with this camera). now, the files are in .mpg format (mpeg2?) but they are huge. a 16 minute video ended up being well over 700megs and i believe it was in 640x480 resolution. i've tried using adobe premiere to make the files 320x240 so they are small enough to upload to youtube but the quality of the file is almost unwatchable. i was told its because an .mpg file is already compressed and to re-compress it kills the quality.

so, if anyone can help me out, give me some advice here on how to do this. am i doing something wrong in this process? is there a better way to do this with the hardware i have now (vhs, minidvd handycam, premiere and other editing programs)/?

thanks in advance, i've been frustrated for weeks trying to figure this out.

[edDV]

State your goals clearly. You have VHS that you want to upload to YTube? How long is the clip?

[randomguy]

- i have clips of various lengths on various vhs tapes that i want to put on my computer, and a couple i want to throw on youtube or other video hosting sites

- the video clips are anywhere from 5-15 minutes long

- my main issue is how to compress the .mpg files properly. as an example, i put that one 16 minute video in 640x480 ended up being over 700 megs, so i am assuming the file sizes are all relative to length (4 minute video = appx 175 megs). i'd like to put them in a 320x240 resolution and still have a clear video that is a reasonable size.

[guns1inger]

Filesize = running time (length) x bitrate. This is universal for video compression. Lower the bitrate, get a smaller file. Larger resolutions may require a higher bitrate in order to maintain the same quality. However the compression algorithm itself can also play a part in the quality. Some simply compress better than others. 175 mg for 4 minutes is way over the top, give 25 minutes can be comfortably put into 240 MB and still look pretty good.

[Scorpion King]

YouTube has a 100MB file size limit. They also resize everything to 320x240 framesize.

I would resize to 320x240 and use a bitrate calculator to determine the bitrate I could use.

A 15 minute clip which contains 128Kbps audio can have 793Kbps video. A 320x240 frame with 793Kbps video looks like crap in MPEG2. MPEG1 will probably look better but still will suffer especially if the video is not high quality to begin with. Divx, Xvid, Mov, WMV, or even FLV will probably give a better looking file overall. The choice is up to you.

I would load the MPEG2 file directly into VirtualDubMod. Add a resize filter and set it to 320x240. I would inspect the quality and try a few filters like sharpening (about 4-6), MSU Deblocking (default settings), unsharp mask (lower default settings by at least 50%), or whatever you think, trying to get the best quality possible to start with. Then select uncompressed for the video and full processing for the audio and export to an AVI file. If you want you can install the Huffyuv codec and use that because it only requires about 1/3rd the hdd space as uncompressed and is still lossless.

Then take that avi file and encode it to Divx or FLV or whatever you like using the bitrate the calculator says you can use. I would set for 2pass no matter which codec I tried. Using the proper settings the filesize should hit dead on. You could also use AutoGK, DrDivx, and many other programs that are easier to setup than a manual encode in VirtualDubMod.

Youtube is going to reencode and murder your audio down to 64Kbps 1 channel 22,050 MP3 no matter what you send them, but I would still encode to at least 128Kbps stereo 44100 myself, but that may not be necessary. You could test a couple conversions and see what will reencode to those settings and still sound ok... lol

The bitrate calculations can be done with a standard calculator but is easier to do on a bitrate calc. Many are available for download and freeware and the hardest part is finding one you like to use. Using a normal calc you would calculate the audio then divide that number by 8 and minus that from the 100MB. Divide the remaining by 15, then by 60 then multiply that by 8. This number should be 793Kbps.

(I didn't say it would be, just that it should be)

Good luck.

[randomguy]

thanks for your help, everyone - i will try a couple of these methods and let you know how it goes!