Lossless Compression of AVI Video

[meeshu]

I'm wanting to compress losslessly a 72 GB AVI video clip to (hopefully) less than 1 GB playable video clip.

Output format/container doesn't really matter.

What is the best software to compress the 72 GB AVI video to a much smaller size without quality loss (as far as possible)? And what settings should be used within the appropriate software?

Here is the MediaInfo of the 72 GB video clip -


[Attachment 76923 - Click to enlarge]

[jagabo]

Lossless compression typically gets between 3:1 to 2:1 compression. Ie, you 72 GB file will become somewhere between 24 and 32 GB. There are some exceptions like noiseless, low detail, computer generated video, or lots of noisless repeated still frames. To get down to 1 GB you're likely to need lossy compression.

[meeshu]

Thanks for the reply!

I was concerned that it would be difficult if not impossible to get the 72 GB clip losslessly compressed to less than 1 GB.

I've being using Handbrake in an attempt to get the 72 GB clip compressed below 1 GB. Handbrake does manage to get compression to (well) below 1 GB, but the compression is not lossless, unfortunately.

The 72 GB AVI clip was created from a 335 MB MP4 clip using Virtualdub2. But I suspect the options chosen in Virtualdub for creating the AVI clip were not selected for best (lossless) compression for the AVI clip. I'm looking into this now, and may try to get better lossless compression of the AVI clip.

72 GB from a 335 MB clip seems a bit excessive(?)

[Alwyn]

What's happened is that you've converted the MP4 into "uncompressed" AVI format; that's the reason it's so big. That's indicated by video format from the Mediainfo readout: RGB. If you want to create a lossless, compressed AVI file, on the Save Video screen in VDub, with the Compression button, choose a lossless codec such as HUFFYUV or Lagarith, or whatever others you may have installed such as UT Video.

That will yield you a file of around Jagabo's size, 24-32GB.

There's no way you'll get a lossless file size of under 1GB. The only way to get below 1GB is to use lossy compression, such as MP4, which is what your master file already is.

[meeshu]

Thanks for the comments!

Yes, the wrong encoding option must have been chosen initially (Uncompressed AVI). Just ran Virtualdub using the Lagarith lossless codec and got an AVI clip size of 18.8 GB. This size is a bit more manageable!

[Crunchedfire]

Thanks for the comments!

Yes, the wrong encoding option must have been chosen initially (Uncompressed AVI). Just ran Virtualdub using the Lagarith lossless codec and got an AVI clip size of 18.8 GB. This size is a bit more manageable!

Nice result! Did you go to the Lagarith codec settings to check out the "Enable Null Frames"?, from the info within the codec settings it is supposed to replace an identical frame with an null frame and re-use the previous identical frame and the result can be more and faster compression.

I guess the results will vary since an video could just aswell have zero identical frames while an other could have many!

[meeshu]

No, I didn't make any setting changes to the Lagarith codec. I wasn't aware that you could check the Enable Null Frames. I might have a look at this option shortly.

EDIT: tried Enable Null Frames, but in this case only got an AVI clip that was roughly 10 bytes smaller that the AVI clip created without selecting Enable Null Frames.

[Crunchedfire]

No, I didn't make any setting changes to the Lagarith codec. I wasn't aware that you could check the Enable Null Frames. I might have a look at this option shortly.

EDIT: tried Enable Null Frames, but in this case only got an AVI clip that was roughly 10 bytes smaller that the AVI clip created without selecting Enable Null Frames.

Ok, that was not much better then before! Cant have been many identical frames to replace with an null frame in the video then maybe!

[Alwyn]

IMO Null frames is a furphy. What video would have two exactly-the-same frames one after the other? Its certainly possible in some scenarios but video is movement. There would be very few consecutive identical frames. Is that you, Swedaniel?

[lollo]

IMO Null frames is a furphy. What video would have two exactly-the-same frames one after the other? Its certainly possible in some scenarios but video is movement. There would be very few consecutive identical frames. Is that you, Swedaniel?

Yes, Crunchedfire is the same "sort of "bugged" software writing some (useless) words in reply to few keywords found in the posts" as Swedaniel, who also replies to himself

Null frames in Lagarith contest are generally "inserted frames" in an analog capture (that should be just a few). There is no need to set anything, the capture software already "writes" the inserted frames as few bytes telling to repeat the previous frame.