What's the Best format to MOV Files to to save space and preserve quality?

[Arrownight]

Hi, I'm new, just joined. I have one of those Vacation mini-keychain-spy cams that only work for about an hour, but with some double-sided velcro tape, you can take just about anywhere as a poor-mans Go Pro.

The only problem is the file size and quality.

It claims to be 720x1280 HD but is very grainy. Still I have a lot of good footage I want to save.

30 mins of film time is
.MOV
720x1280 but grainy
bitrate says 7065
30 fps
6553 kbps
The file is 1.49 GB large

Converting this to anything has been a nightmare.

Can anyone recommend a program, bitrate, or ending format that is best for preserving the quality and shrinking the filesize?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Arrow.

[Baldrick]

What have you tried?

Try for example handbrake and convert to mp4 with h264 video and aac audio, load the mov, use the high profile, under the video tab use constant quality/bitrate settings to adjust the output file size. Higher value=smaller size. Try around 20 first.

[Hoser Rob]

"It claims to be 720x1280 HD but is very grainy. "

If the image sensor is as small as you're making it sound I'm not surprised. Not all pixel counts are created equal with digital cameras.

You didn't specify what you want to compress to but avidemux rarely chokes on anything IME. I've used it to convert .mov files a number of times.

[Arrownight]

I've tried handbrake and avidemux. Avidemux is great for lightening the film (adding contrast, which it needs), Handbrake looked promising but I couldn't get it to work. 2 Versions somehow got mashed up together on my system and now clicking handbrake is like puring from an empty milk carton.

Thanks for all the help so far - It seems I was thinking the right things, not to get it to work. What type of file size should I be expecting?
On average avi demux wants to make it 700mb. Problem is - its not high quality when it gets there.

I can get it as low as 248mb, but it looks like pixel pie.

I guess Im looking for an answer as to what ranges would it be good to shrink this to? 360x720? Something like that? (i know that isnt a range, but its the best I can come up with off the top of my head) In fact, what would be a good exactly half shrinkdown?

[aedipuss]

you start out with junk there's no way to make it acceptable. to keep what little quality there is don't re-encode it.

[Cornucopia]

"Grainy" sounds like either it is bitrate-starved, blurry because of poor optics, or not light-sensitve enough (requiring additional gain, which adds noise). With a spycam as you are describing, all of those are possible, if not likely.

First thing you should do is not give us 2nd hand generalities of the file, but MORE, DETAILED info. Such as a MediaInfo text readout of the file, or an original short segment clip (~10 sec), or both. Plus, info on the spycam's Brand/Model# and a full accounting of the steps you have used to process the files on your PC.

However, you really need to understand that the 3 axioms, "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear" and "Garbage In-Garbage Out" and "You get what you pay for", are still very much in effect WRT video. Yes, downrezzing & filtering can possibly give you something usable, but often you are only, in effect, just "polishing a turd".

Scott

[sanlyn]

Can anyone recommend a program, bitrate, or ending format that is best for preserving the quality and shrinking the filesize?

shrink size means a lower bitrate or more lossy encoder and....."preserve quality?"

No way.

[Arrownight]

Thanks for the knock upside the head. I can swallow reality. Bitter as she be. Thanks for the replies though and getting me to look at handbrake again. Avi demux is also still tops. Thanks again guys.

[_Al_]

You can try to remove noise, but that belongs kind of to "restoration category", you can improve visual appearance and make it more watchable and compressible.

I use this to remove that ugly colorful noise under low light, using consumer camcorder.

[Arrownight]

Holy smokes _Al_ Yes This. How do I remove the noise so I can improve visual appearance? That's what I'm looking for. There is a lot of ugly colorful noise, as much of my footage is under low light. Well not completely under low light, but with normal light which looks terrible. What program/settings for this "restoration?"

[_Al_]

Comfortable solution?
Get NLE like Sony Vegas get NeatVideo plug in and denoise. You just find some area in video, Neat video chooses profile automaticaly and denoises. What you should do is leave some noise there otherwise with all noise gone compressibility is even greater but after encoding you will see banding artifacts. So yo either drag "Noise reduction amount" for Y noise to the left (say 60-80%) and also you can leave "Noise Reduction Amount" for High noise only 20% or so. This way you still compress much better and get rid of color noise, visualy it is going to be like day and night difference. I'd recomend even sharpen 15% or so, settings are right there. Depends on video I guess.

More difficult solutions, even free would be to use Avisynth and its plugin filters, denoisers, you can take some inspiration here:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/358043-A-comparison-of-AVIsynth-denoise-filters

Or you can combine both approaches, you edit in NLE and export through DMFS - Avisynth (where you denoise) - encoder