Large .MOV file to compress

[prophet01]

Hi folks

I shot two videos for work purposes yesterday (.mov), file sizes 4GB and 559MB respectively, which I wish to compress and upload to my Dropbox account.

Having searched for ways to do this I came across Handbrake which I tested on the smaller file. It resulted in a larger 613MB .mp4 file.

Did I do something wrong?

Thanks in advance.
Prophet

[smrpix]

Without knowing what codecs were contained in the mov, what settings you used in handbrake, or what you're required to deliver there's not a whole lot of advice anyone can give.

Your methodology is fine, but we need details.

[newpball]

Hi folks

I shot two videos for work purposes yesterday (.mov), file sizes 4GB and 559MB respectively, which I wish to compress and upload to my Dropbox account.

Having searched for ways to do this I came across Handbrake which I tested on the smaller file. It resulted in a larger 613MB .mp4 file.

Did I do something wrong?

Thanks in advance.
Prophet

Do you realize that every time you compress or convert a video it degrades the quality (unless the compression is lossless)?

[prophet01]

Yes I do.That's why I'll retain the original .mov.
I wish, however, to share the video via Dropbox hence the wish to have a smaller file size version to upload.

[prophet01]

smrpix
Thanks, I'll post some details shortly.

[redwudz]

I would try VidCoder instead of Handbrake. It's a front end for Handbrake and makes adjustments easier. But with any conversion you need to pick either a quality or a size.
With your requirements, I suspect a size would be best. Try setting that in VidCoder/Handbrake and see if you like the results.
If not, then you need a larger size or some fine tuning of the encoder settings.

Another program that I use for .MOVs from my video camera is AVIDemux. It's an editor and a encoder. But I have more luck with the 64bit version of the program, no idea why.

[Cornucopia]

"Dropbox account" - do you have a size limit (mine's like ~236GB)? If not really, why re-compress? If so, is that the only way to share? If so, what is your actual available capacity? (assuming you don't intend to put more items up there for a while)

"Share the video" - Are you expecting users to view the file on-site? Dropbox isn't a streaming site, so users will have to download the file first (at best they could do 'progressive download' streaming). Why not use Youtube? Vimeo?...

Without getting these constraints ironed out ahead of time, you are stabbing blindly in the dark. How can you know if you've met your target if you don't even know what the target is? That's what you're doing wrong.

Scott