Compress 50GB avi to one DVD

[pauldaymond]

I have captured a 1 hour film from VCS and now have an AVI file which by default opens in Windows media player.
However the file size is 50.5 Gb which seems very large for just a 1 hour piece of film.

I now want to burn this to DVD , however as recordable DVD's are 4.7 Gb I need to reduce my file size by a lot.

Is there a compression tool, I need to use or should I be trying to capture in a different format i.e. MPeg?
If so is there a way of chossing the file formats when capturing with Easycap as I only get AVI files by default.

Either way 50Gb into 4.7 Gb doesn't go so I need to find a solution.

Please can somebody advise?

Thanks

[Baldrick]

I moved your question to your own topic.

Do you want it to work on standalone dvd players? Then just make a dvd-video using for example dvd flick (or see our tools section under all-in-one dvd converters).

Or if it's enough that it works on computers then can you compress it to avi xvid or mp4 h264 using for example handbrake, autogk, virtualdub, avidemux, winff, etc. Or make a wmv using Windows Movie Maker.

[PuzZLeR]

I'd recommend playing around with a Bitrate Calculator to figure this out.

You'll find that 1 hour of any video needs a bitrate of maximum roughly 9900kbps (9.9MB) to fit into a DvD-R with room to spare for a decent audio format.

Following up on Baldrick's post, the video formats mentioned can indeed compress, and handle, bitrates that low and much, much lower for a quality hour of standard definition (SD) video.

Keep in mind, if you do want it playable on a standard DvD as DvD video you can only use MPEG-2 at the DvD spec at maximum 9800kbps.

[pauldaymond]

Baldrick.

I would like it tio run on a standalone DVD player.
Have downloaded DVD flick an daim to use it.
However Because the file is so large it takes up almost all of my C: drive.

Is there any way I can capture using a different format than AVI so that I get smaller files to begin with on my PC before I then use DVD flick to burn to DVD?

Ot is compressing using Handbrake a better option?

Thanks

[guns1inger]

DV is 13 GB per hour.

[greymalkin]

I'm not sure what VCS is...but there are many capture cards which capture directly to MPEG ready for DVD burning.