DV Compression??

[JonnyOneNut]

I have some DV .avi files and I want to compress them. What is the best compression type that holds the best quality and keeps the file size to a minimum?? I'm using Vegas Video 4.0 by the way...

[JonnyOneNut]

The video is 4 minutes and 40 seconds long. I used Divx to encode it and it's 83MB (too big). It also does not look that good... please help

[daamon]

Hi JonnyOneNut,

Are you looking to retain the same resolution - i.e. screen size? A smaller resolution will mean you can get away with a lower bitrate (equals less quality) and hence a lower filesize.

Other conversion formats worth looking are Xvid ad WMV.

What do you want to do with the file once it's compressed? Why is such a small size a factor? This may help in choosing the type of compression.

[Raga]

280 seconds and 83MB mean a bitrate of around 2400kbps. Your DV footage isn't going to look too good in full resolution at that bitrate, what to speak of lower. Encode with Quantizer 3 or smaller (preferably 2) if you want to make it look about as good as the original and learn to live with the size, or otherwise resize to 320x240 and compress at 1300kbps to give you a 50 MB file and learn to live with the fact that it isn't anywhere near the original quality. And if that still isn't small enough... well, how badly do you want to mistreat your video? If it's really worth preserving, try to live with the size.