Need a tool for compressing my videos

[hdam]

I have been trying to compress videos that I have done, but I can't manage to get them compressed to a small enough size or with any reasonable quality.

I have downloaded hundreds of music film clips that run at large video sizes, are perfect quailty and are also of reasonable file size, usually about 30MB - 40 MB.

I have been using VirtualDub and xVid to compress music film clips of my own creation to try and get them to an easily manouvrable size, but to no avail. To get even close to 40 MB the size of the video has to be tiny and the quality so bad you cannot even see what's going on.

Am I missing something? How can I get these clips compressed like so many I have already? Any help would be much appreciated.

[Baldrick]

Give us more information.

what is your source? captured? resolution? interlaced?
what resolutions have you tried?
any filters?
have you tried 2-pass?
what audio bitrate do you use?

[hdam]

Source is my Panasonic GS120 DV camera, the original res of the movies is 720 x 576, no filters.
I have not tried 2-pass, can you explain what this does and how to do it? Thanks

[Safesurfer]

This may be of use, a guide to using XVid with VDub on the Doom9 site.

http://www.doom9.org/xvid-vdub.htm

[sanjayk]

hdam,

As you have found out for yourself that smaller the file size you want to make, you have to compromise on the quality. Consider quality as the prime criterion and not file size. Select quality that seems reasonable to you and encode your files using VDub, TMPGenc or any other s/w. Author them to creat VCD/SVCD or DVD.