Homemade mp4 files quality vs. ripped movies in mp4 format

[MrMX]

Hi at all.

I'm new to homemade video. Recently I bought a low priced camera Samsung HMX-QF30 and all videos I record got stored in mp4 in SD memory. Then I've noticed filesize is too big even I shot the camera around 10 min., I mean the files can get really BIG even they are 10 min. long and above all this I don't see a substantial quality on them.

Even worse, when I reduce filesize with Camtasia Studio 8 to an acceptable size for me, lets say around 200MB (10 min.), quality has a very negative impact. Then I was wondering when I download and see a mp4 movie 800MB size (2hrs. long) ripped from Blu-ray and has excellent quality.

Now the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question LOL
What's going on here and what can I do in my humble PC?

Thanks in advance.

[Baldrick]

Camtasia studio???

Have you tried convert/shrink with anything else like VidCoder, Handbrake, Xmedia Recode. Use the high profile. Keep same resolution/frame size.

[MrMX]

Camtasia studio???

Have you tried convert/shrink with anything else like VidCoder, Handbrake, Xmedia Recode. Use the high profile. Keep same resolution/frame size.

Thanks. Yep Camtasia Studio, I am in the newbie section, no? lol
Alright, going to try XMedia Recode to begin with this journey in mp4 conversion/shrinking.

[Cornucopia]

What can you do? Learn more about the fundamentals of video/audio, then take a more holistic/big-picture view and change your expectations about size.

But really, you bought a low price camera and are still expecting it to perform up to Hollywood quality standards?...

Scott

[MrMX]

What can you do? Learn more about the fundamentals of video/audio, then take a more holistic/big-picture view and change your expectations about size.

But really, you bought a low price camera and are still expecting it to perform up to Hollywood quality standards?...

Scott

Hello Scott.

Honestly I don't know what to expect. Believe it or not I'm new to homemade video editing and never done that before.
Because a ~800MB mp4 file of a blu-ray ripped movie (2 hrs. long) looks good while my 10 min. long 1GB doesn't. Even less when I shrink to 100 or 200MB.

That's why I came to this forum to ask in the first place.

[jagabo]

Your shaky handheld, no-depth-of-field interlaced video from the noisy CCD and hardware encoder on a cheap camcorder will never compress as well as Hollywood's professionally shot film compressed with software.

[julitomg]

All that´s been said is correct. There´s a number of reasons your video won´t be like the highly movies you´ve seen or downloaded. I´d ask you what do you plan to do with your memory card files, do you want to edit them (add, delete parts of it, add music, titles, etc..)? if so, what kind of editing do you want to do? (some people are just satisfied with taking out out of focus parts, others want/need to perform much more complex tasks), do you just want to watch your video on your TV?, do you want to make a Bluray or DVD out of it?, upload to youtube? Your files are "large" for a reason (and they´re already highly compressed), just reducing them to a tenth of their size for no other reason but saving HDD space is no a very good idea, specially if you don´t know exactly what you are doing.

[MrMX]

All that´s been said is correct. There´s a number of reasons your video won´t be like the highly movies you´ve seen or downloaded. I´d ask you what do you plan to do with your memory card files, do you want to edit them (add, delete parts of it, add music, titles, etc..)? if so, what kind of editing do you want to do? (some people are just satisfied with taking out out of focus parts, others want/need to perform much more complex tasks), do you just want to watch your video on your TV?, do you want to make a Bluray or DVD out of it?, upload to youtube?

Thanks julitomg.
I'm going to shrink my mp4 files procuring less quality loss then storage them, that's it. No authoring DVDs or Blu-rays, etc.

Your files are "large" for a reason (and they´re already highly compressed), just reducing them to a tenth of their size for no other reason but saving HDD space is no a very good idea, specially if you don´t know exactly what you are doing.

This exactly what I was trying to achieve: save space.

[MrMX]

Your shaky handheld, no-depth-of-field interlaced video from the noisy CCD and hardware encoder on a cheap camcorder will never compress as well as Hollywood's professionally shot film compressed with software.

I think this is a very important explanation to my question, thank you.

[_Al_]

That is why you keep originals also.

I'm going to shrink my mp4 files procuring less quality loss then storage them, that's it. No authoring DVDs or Blu-rays, etc.

Originals you keep, originals from camcorder videos are meant to be kept as is, as was said above, about 25Mb/s that's normal.

10 year ago, DV avi format had same bitrate for SD resolution and it was recommended to keep it. Most did not care, perhaps have only DVD's from that era and bunch of unorganized tapes (good scenario) . Those who did and certainly those who kept their originals and edited DV avi movies in that format can enjoy new capabilities of the time to encode it much better or to proper deinterlace or even upscale (for the sole reason to mix it up with new HD videos). To work with encodings of that time, from 10 years ago, it is not possible, to get a decent quality out of it.

[digitalcurosity]

a great free program is Miro video Converter, i have used it for many years to reduce large HD video files to smaller MP4 files. Since i have to e-mail videos to my iPhone and my mail server Yahoo. limits files to 25mb, even using Drop Box that has joined Yahoo for larger files, the limit is 150gb.
Miro Video Converter may not be the full answer to your needs, but it's free and gives you a place to start.
http://www.mirovideoconverter.com

[MrMX]

a great free program is Miro video Converter, i have used it for many years to reduce large HD video files to smaller MP4 files. Since i have to e-mail videos to my iPhone and my mail server Yahoo. limits files to 25mb, even using Drop Box that has joined Yahoo for larger files, the limit is 150gb.
Miro Video Converter may not be the full answer to your needs, but it's free and gives you a place to start.
http://www.mirovideoconverter.com

Thank you.