Good quality, normal sized video

[pcq]

When using the various video editing programs such as Premiere, Vegas, etc., if you want your video to be about the size of a normal .avi movie, at about 700mb to 1gb, what settings and codec should you use?

thanks

[aedipuss]

the only constant you can go by is - filesize = bitrate x time. you need to fill in the knowns and work out the unknown. all movies are different lengths. codec choice is just that, your choice. whatever works for whatever you are going to play it back on.

[guns1inger]

A 700mb avi is not a 'normal size movie'. A 700mb avi is a 'Pirated, low quality, downloaded from the internet" sized movie.

[dragonkeeper]

Sounds like your asking how to encode movies so you can upload to a torrent site. That's not what we are about, I don't think you'l get much help with that type of endeavor from this forum.

[Noahtuck]

Sounds like your asking how to encode movies so you can upload to a torrent site. That's not what we are about, I don't think you'l get much help with that type of endeavor from this forum.

WOW!!!


That's an awful lot of assuming going on there!!!


I do a lot of 2 & 3 movie Xvid encodes to fit multiple movies on one DVDR for my kids to watch and i never upload any of them.....

whatever works for whatever you are going to play it back on.

That info would help a lot!!

And i have to go with guns1inger on the "normal" point, what is "normal" for you may not be "normal" for others, what is your definition of "normal" ?

I hate that word!!!!
LOL!!!

[dragonkeeper]

Sounds like your asking how to encode movies so you can upload to a torrent site. That's not what we are about, I don't think you'l get much help with that type of endeavor from this forum.

WOW!!!


That's an awful lot of assuming going on there!!!

Not assuming anything simply speaking from experience. Giving the OP the opportunity to clarify, hence the "Sounds like" opening statement.

I do a lot of 2 & 3 movie Xvid encodes to fit multiple movies on one DVDR for my kids to watch and i never upload any of them.....

Years ago I use to do this as well (emphasis on the use to), but i wised up. I realized burning all those DVD was expensive as well as time consuming in comparison to either setting up a a network Hard drive and buy equipment that was capable of stream content or building a dedicated HTPC.

But to each his own.

the only constant you can go by is - filesize = bitrate x time. you need to fill in the knowns and work out the unknown. all movies are different lengths. codec choice is just that, your choice. whatever works for whatever you are going to play it back on.

aedipuss gave a good answer, the OP needs to do some research to get their answer. Isn't that part of the point of having a forum?

[mike20021969]

Going off DivX converter's presets, their standard bit rate is 1100kbps (for 4:3) - 1300kbps (for 16:9) which will give reasonable results at roughly 1/5 of the original file size.

Personally, I don't touch "DivX" these days.
MP4 (AVC/H264 video+AAC Audio) will give better results + generally even smaller file size with the Constant Quality option if available (CQ is dependant on your encoding program).

[Noahtuck]

Say what you will but it's obvious you jumped to a conclusion and basically accused him of doing or wanting to do something illegal with no proof and telling him no one here would help him .....

And good for you for not wasting money on recordable media anymore, ever heard of RW's ?
And networks only reach so far, not that any of that really has anything to do with the OP but yeah, to each his own.....

If you can here me way up there

[jagabo]

To get a movie down to 700 MB with half decent quality requires the Divx or Xvid codecs and a reduced frame size (assuming DVD or higher resolution source). h.264 codecs can compress better than Divx/Xvid, ie, better quality at the same size, or a smaller file with equivalent quality. x264 (a command line encoder) is one of the better h.264 encoders. There are many GUI front ends for it like Xvid4PSP, MeGUI, etc.

Don't expect noisy, shaky, interlaced handheld camcorder video to compress as well as DVD or Blu-ray sources.

[pcq]

Thank you. I have never uploaded a movie to a torrent site and I never will. I'm just trying to convert my old vhs tapes into files I can play back on my computer, and I thought that was the normal size.

Sounds like your asking how to encode movies so you can upload to a torrent site. That's not what we are about, I don't think you'l get much help with that type of endeavor from this forum.

WOW!!!


That's an awful lot of assuming going on there!!!


I do a lot of 2 & 3 movie Xvid encodes to fit multiple movies on one DVDR for my kids to watch and i never upload any of them.....

whatever works for whatever you are going to play it back on.

That info would help a lot!!

And i have to go with guns1inger on the "normal" point, what is "normal" for you may not be "normal" for others, what is your definition of "normal" ?

I hate that word!!!!
LOL!!!

[pcq]

A 700mb avi is not a 'normal size movie'. A 700mb avi is a 'Pirated, low quality, downloaded from the internet" sized movie.

So what is the normal size for a non-pirated, average to good quality movie?

[pcq]

the only constant you can go by is - filesize = bitrate x time. you need to fill in the knowns and work out the unknown. all movies are different lengths. codec choice is just that, your choice. whatever works for whatever you are going to play it back on.

Thanks

[pcq]

Going off DivX converter's presets, their standard bit rate is 1100kbps (for 4:3) - 1300kbps (for 16:9) which will give reasonable results at roughly 1/5 of the original file size.

Personally, I don't touch "DivX" these days.
MP4 (AVC/H264 video+AAC Audio) will give better results + generally even smaller file size with the Constant Quality option if available (CQ is dependant on your encoding program).

Thanks for the helpful advice. I'm going to think about that.

[pcq]

To get a movie down to 700 MB with half decent quality requires the Divx or Xvid codecs and a reduced frame size (assuming DVD or higher resolution source). h.264 codecs can compress better than Divx/Xvid, ie, better quality at the same size, or a smaller file with equivalent quality. x264 (a command line encoder) is one of the better h.264 encoders. There are many GUI front ends for it like Xvid4PSP, MeGUI, etc.

Don't expect noisy, shaky, interlaced handheld camcorder video to compress as well as DVD or Blu-ray sources.

Thanks for the detailed advice.

[guns1inger]

It is actually difficult to get good quality in a small file size with VHS source material. Most VHS captures are full of noise, which requires a lot of bitrate to encode. You can look at using filters (virtualdub, or if you are more adventurous, avisynth) to reduce the noise before encoding. It will take time and experimentation to find a good compromise. Unless you have to have AVI as your output, you will find that H264/AVC will give you better quality at smaller filesizes, however it still will not overcome the inherent limitations of your source material. I suggest you have a look at the Restoration forum, where questions of noise reduction and VHS clean up have been well covered. Expect it to get technical at times - this is a complex area.

You could try using XmediaRecode, which has a number of built-in filters and can output to a number of different formats. Try a few different bitrates (always look at either 2-pass constant or constant quality encoding) and filter combinations. You won't get the same quality as you would restoring and prepping by hand, but you might get something you are happy to live with.

[jagabo]

It is actually difficult to get good quality in a small file size with VHS source material. Most VHS captures are full of noise, which requires a lot of bitrate to encode. You can look at using filters (virtualdub, or if you are more adventurous, avisynth) to reduce the noise before encoding.

In addition to the noise, unless you used a deck with a line time base corrector, the video has a lot of horizontal jitter (individual scanlines move left/right and aren't the same length). See this post for an example:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/306272-Computer-video-capture-vs-vcr-to-dvd-combo?p...=1#post1882662

That jitter also eats up a lot of bitrate, and it can't be fixed in software.

So basically, give up on 700 MB movies from a VHS source. Unless you are willing to go with a very small frame size.

[pcq]

How do you render (which I guess means the same thing as encode or compress) your video in another program like xvid if you have to use a certain program like Vegas to do the editing? If I edit the video, then I have to render it to save it.

[mike20021969]

I always render/export to MPEG2 (I use VideoStudio X4). Then use VidCoder to convert the MPEG2 to MP4 (H264Video/AACAudio). Use the Constant Quality option (I like 27) instead of choosing a bit rate. My videos come out pretty good averaging around 800-900kbps when played back.

Different videos may requires more or less CQ. You may need to experiment a little.