Video file compression for email

[doubleb27]

Hello, I am trying to find the best software/codec to compress video for emailing. My goal is to take 50MB down to 5MB without too much quality loss. I have been able to get it down to 20MB with 3gp(good quality) and as small as 7MB with Quicktime, RM and 3gp but the quality sucks. Any ideas? Thanks

[edDV]

WMV compresses well and encoding is faster than most. It also has the advantage of playing on any windows and most mac computers without requiring a special player or codec to be installed.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/encoder/default.aspx

Other options are divx or h.264 MPeg4. Both will require special players.

[rhegedus]

Yep, wmv is the way to go.

Have a look in Windows Movie Maker for the options.

[mikiem]

Going small, sometimes softening the background helps, gives the illusion of higher quality maybe. RealVideo is known for this, or compress to wmv in Vegas for same sort of effect. Might also try out some of the prog. designed to convert for PSP, cells, etc...

[mats.hogberg]

I think a 10x reduction (depending of course on source codec) without "too much quality loss" is to asking for a bit too much!

/Mats

[edDV]

I think a 10x reduction (depending of course on source codec) without "too much quality loss" is to asking for a bit too much!

/Mats

Compression at this degree always results in quality loss. It becomes an art to steer losses into areas where human vision is ambivolent.

Think of video production as a magic show and you will prosper.

[doubleb27]

Thanks for the good tips, rhegedus- great idea, win movie maker worked like a charm, got 50mb to 6.65 mb with decent quality, have had that prog forever, never used it always thought it some crappy preloaded software-I was wrong. I have MANY video edit/convert that I paid for and that one had been there all the time. thanks again