simple .mpg to .avi conversion?

[the_shyguy]

hi i have 2 mpg's and in total it all equals about 1.2Gig... if i convert this into 1 .avi file will i get a smaller file without loosing any quality?

if so, then how do i do it? i found one guide on here but it seemed to have a lot of other options in there and i wasnt sure what was relevant to my situation??

i have virtualdubmod on my computer..

[thecoalman]

hi i have 2 mpg's and in total it all equals about 1.2Gig... if i convert this into 1 .avi file will i get a smaller file without loosing any quality?

Any time you convert or reencode a video quality loss is inevitable, may only be a little but it will be present. File size depends on what codec and what settings you use.

I haven't used it but I've seen this tool suggested. https://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=DVD2AVI

My suggestion is you find something that works with mpeg2 if your going to be using it for DVD. Most editors will only reencode the parts of the video that you have edited as opposed to the entire video.

I've seen womble suggested for this, most consumer editors such as Ulead Video Studio also support this.

[mats.hogberg]

VirtualDubMod is the tool to use. But unless you use Huffyuv or uncompressed AVI, quality will suffer. (These will most likely be bigger in file size too).
I suggest XviD at highest quality. It will be very close to original quality.

/Mats

[edDV]

the_shyguy,

You haven't given us a goal for what you intend to do with the video.

MPeg is a compressed format that can be easily encoded for DVD. It is already in a compact form and MPeg is probably the most universal format for storage.

AVI isn't a format. AVI is a container for many formats (codecs) each with a specialized purpose. Tell us what you want to do.

[the_shyguy]

cheers for the replies... basically i tend to have all of my vids in avi format because when you encode it to mpg the file size increases... so i thought that maybe if i convert a mpg i have back to avi it would reduce the size... but i guess i will leave it as mpg then... i was just looking to reduce the size...

[Baldrick]

Convert to divx or xvid or wmv if you want to reduce the size, some easy tools:
divx:
dr. divx
xvid:
autogk
wmv
windows media encoder

but you will lose video quality.....try and see how it looks.

[spectroelectro]

The reason people are having trouble answering your question is that the file extension "avi" doesn't mean anything by itself. An avi is just a wrapper. An avi could be:

Type 1 DV (5:1 compression, 13 gigs/hour)
Type 2 DV (5:1 compression, 13 gigs/hour)
Huffyuv (lossless compression, 30 gigs/hour)
RBG uncompressed (60 gigs/hour)
XVid (compression depends on bitrate)
DiVX 3.X (ditto)
DiVX 5.x (ditoo)

and so on.

At a guess, you probably want to convert an MPEG-2 file into Divx. This will generate a lot of video artifacts, since DiVX (mpeg-4) even at high bitrates suffesr from signifcant video artifacts. Easiest way is to use some Divx conversion tool like Dr. Divx or Vidomi. Converting from MPEG-2, which has already gotten knocked down considerably in video quality from the original source, to Divx, will knock down video quality quite a bit.

If you want to save filespace, think about capturing to or encoding to half d1 MPEG-2, 352 x 480 instead of full D1 mpeg-2. You'll squeeze files downto half their size and suffer no loss of video quality.