compress

[s6556]

Is it OK to compress an AVI or MPG file (Movie) for storage untill I am ready to make it a DVD?

[ZippyP.]

Mpegs and most avi's (it depends on the codec) are already "compressed." It's not practical to compress then uncompress them, at least not without quality loss. What I mean is they cannot be RARed or Zipped like other types of files to make them smaller. If your avi is uncompressed, well that that is a different story.

[kyemeng]

The straight answer is yes you can. But like what ZippyP has mentioned AVI and mpg files are already compressed and you will not gain much in recompressing these files.

[guns1inger]

Actually, all you will gain is a quality loss.

[sanjayk]

If by compression you mean compress the file using tools like Winzip or WinRAR then you wont save much on space. See screenshot below.



As you can clearly see there is not much compression. The contents of AVI file are already optimized using complex algorithims. So further file compression does not result into much space saving.

If you want to compress the contents of the AVI (video & audio) then you will further loose quality. Choice is yours.