Best program to reduce filesize?

[de8212]

I have various .avi files that range from 13MB to 155MB. What is the best program to reduce the filesize for putting out on the internet? What file would I get the best quality out of (mpeg, wmv, other, etc????) but still have a smaller filesize?

And while I'm at it. When I transferred the videos from my miniDV camcorder, it automatically saved them as avi's. Is that the best quality? Because I want to get in the habit of saving the best quality vides from the camcorder to my hard drive and then converting them as mentioed above for hosting on the web.

Thanks

[redwudz]

If your camcorder transfered the files in DV format, (A type of AVI) that's probably the best format for quality for your purpose.

For the internet, I would go with either WMV or MPEG-1. Both are more or less universal to most computer platforms. WMV gives better compression for small filesize vs quality. MPG-1 will play on about anything, anywhere, but the quality is a little lower for the filesize. Fine tuning the codec adjustments when you do your conversions and having high quality files to start with will always get you the best quality for your end product, WMV or MPEG-1.

[de8212]

Thanks redwudz.
How do I go about converting the avi to wmv or mpg-1? I just want to also make sure some special codec won't be needed to view the video once I get it out there?
Something that's fairly easy and free would be great.

[redwudz]

I don't use either format that much, but for WMV, Windows Movie Maker would be my first choice, as it is on most systems. For MPEG-1, I favor TMPGEnc encoder. For MPEG-1 it's freeware and a decent converter. With either one, careful attention to the encoding settings will give you the best results. For details or tutorials on that, refer to the 'Guides' to the left. <<<<

[de8212]

Thanks you again redwudz. I completely forgot about WMM. I tried real quick and made a 126MB video only 6.8MB. The quality looks pretty good also. Just need to find somewhere to host some videos now.
Thanks again.

[redwudz]

Good deal. I'm probably out of my league here, but if you have room, you could host both formats. But, at least, have a place for feedback to see what your 'customers' like. You may find most have broadband and can handle more bandwidth. Or if they are on dial up, they can tolerate a more compressed but lower quality alternative format that is faster to load. And it depends on your subject. If you were hosting a tour of an art gallery, low resolution is not a option. Simple subjects with not a lot of background movements can go fairly low on bitrate without sacrificing your message and you can keep the filesize small. As I mentioned, starting with the best quality will allow you the most 'shrinkage' with the least loss.

[whitejremiah]

I'm probably even more outta my league here, too...but you may wanna offer xvid or divx as well.....dunno how much bandwidth they will allow ya to chew up per month, but a lot of people perfer xvid or divx....they are both supported by a lot of devices, and they can compress a movie even better than wmv from my experiance....xvid and divx provide a TON of quality optimizations compared to say mpeg 1....its just a thought...may or may not be of interest to you, so i will leave that completely in your playing field now

[de8212]

Thanks for the tips guys. Regarding xvid and divx, i'll give that some thought also. what would you recommend to encode them to those formats? I wouldn't mind try to take the same file as I did in .wmv to one of those formats to see the difference.