File Size reduction -- which one?

[coffeecup-sf]

Have a slew of various video files, many mpegs that were already compressed FROM avi, also plenty of AVIs, WMVs, just a whole lot. Some of them are too large, would like to reduce the file size considerably. Which program will take a 740x480 mpeg and reduce it down to 360x240 or in half. Or I could cut out scenes of the videos, make them shorter. Obviously some quality would be lost but that may be ok. Too many videos, too little space. So I guess some kind of editor would be good. Any recommendations? Thanks.

[guns1inger]

SUPER is a pretty simple place to start. Many formats i and out, a lot of resolution choices, handles a lot of codecs.

[mats.hogberg]

Reducing frame size (like from 740x480(?) to 360x240) doesn't in itself make the file size smaller. But it lets you use a lower bitrate when reencoding (thus making the file smaller) without visible compression artefacts.
There are only 2 factors that determine file size: Bitrate and length (in time).

/Mats

[coffeecup-sf]

Ok nice little file and really liked the fact that it's free. I used it on a few test runs and unfortunately I found it takes a real long time on my computer (specs in my profile). I tried to do a 1gb file and it took forever, had to cancel. Then I tried to shrink a 250 mb file and it reduced it down to 130mb which is good, but it also took a long time. Must have been over 30 minutes to do it. Also, the outputted file would not play on WMP (but played with a right click load on VideoLan Player). Also the new file did have a serious reduction in quality, some segments looking like total blocks but other sections looking "viewable!"

Is there some settings I should be using? For Video, Codec, and Audio which should I select? Also for screen size should I select "no change"?

Another thing!! How can I tell in the first place what bitrate a video file originally is, thereby knowing what to output it as? I used right click properties but wouldn't you know it Windows does a lousy job of telling me file properties. So I would appreciate pointers on the "SUPER" program and would like to try again. Thanks.

[yoda313]

gspot or avicodec can tell you the video bitrate and resolution of a video file.

[mats.hogberg]

Just like frame size doesn't affect file size, neither do source file size affect encoding time. In this case, it's 99% down to how long the video is (,what you're using to encode) and your CPU speed.
On my system (about 2x as fast as yours) doing DVD/MPG to AVI conversions, it usually takes 1 to 2 times video length to reencode.
Do long encodes overnight.

/Mats