How to compress this video in Filmora?

[JT101]

Hello guys

I have a camera that produces video files in chunks like this:

1hr 50mins, 256MB, data rate 241 kbps, frame rate 14.24 fps, audio rate 0 kbps

Each day I run it, it produces 6 of these files, so a total of about 12hrs of footage and 1.5Gb

I want to combine them all into one file and compress.

Am running the latest version of Filmora, on the following laptop:

Windows 11, Lenovo X1 Thinkpad 3rd Gen Tablet (CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8350U CPU @ 1.70GHz 1.90 GHz, Graphics: Intel UHD Graphics 620, RAM: 8GB, Storage: 256GB SSD)

30 Gb free on C Drive and 20Gb on D drive where I store my files

I appreciate that the original file is very well compressed to begin with, so not sure much can be done, but at the very least I would like to combine the videos. Problem is the rendering is very slow to the point of sometimes grinding to a halt and I have to start over, and it always increases the file size above the sum of the parts.

Had I not succeeded in processing other large video files recorded from my phone camera, I would assume the computer wasn't up to it.
Video files that have for example data rate 8849 kbps, frame rate 30 fps, audio rate 252 kbps.

Even if I just want to join them together, the end video file still seems bigger and the quality much lower. Filmora asks you if you want to keep the raw video file settings which i do. But when I go to render, I have to change video bitrate to 256kbps to match the original. Rendered file is about the same size but lower quality

Any advice or suggestion of other software i can use to join and compress my files without losing masses of quality?

I'd attach the original video but it's 256MB, and the edited version is low quality

Thanks

[Secoast]

You don't mention the format. If supported, you could try Avidemux. Output in Copy mode without encoding. This should give you a 1.5gb file with no loss of quality.

Download the latest nightly from below.

https://www.avidemux.org/nightly/win64/

Edit: You can also reencode to reduce the output size, though at 11 hours, that would take a while.

[jagabo]

Try ffmpeg's concat filter with a file list.

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Concatenate

There are many examples in these forums.

[JT101]

Thanks guys. I'll give that a go.

I would still like to know what it is about these original files that makes it so difficult to render. The reason I want to know, is because in the future i may be editing much longer videos. So maybe it's a hardware issue.

If I try to process one of the original 256MB videos with the same specs ( 1hr 50mins, data rate 241 kbps, frame rate 14.24 fps, audio rate 0 kbps), it will render it in about an hour, despite the fact that it ends up poorer quality.

But if I try to combine 2 of them, it gets halfway through and then grinds to a halt despite there being plenty of space left on my hardrive.

Comparatively, I often produce 15mins video with lots of different elements of video, sound, photos, starting with source footage data rate 8849 kbps, frame rate 30 fps, audio rate 252 kbps, and converting it to a data rate of 20,000kbps no problems at all.


What is it about these files?. Is it because they're so long i.e. 2 x 1hr 50mins.

I could share a link to the file if that would help. It's not precious to me.

[jagabo]

If I try to process one of the original 256MB videos with the same specs ( 1hr 50mins, data rate 241 kbps, frame rate 14.24 fps, audio rate 0 kbps), it will render it in about an hour, despite the fact that it ends up poorer quality.

Any time you re-compress a video using a lossy codec you get lower quality. How much lower depends on the settings and codecs used.

But if I try to combine 2 of them, it gets halfway through and then grinds to a halt despite there being plenty of space left on my hardrive.

This is probably a problem with the software not handling the containers or codecs correctly.

I could share a link to the file if that would help. It's not precious to me.

Yes, provide some sample files.

[JT101]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vEXm4VCFDYutHAJMWfAC06W-SDAA1Mn3/view

[jagabo]

I suggest you use the concat method I mentioned in post #3. I created six sequentially numbered files from your source. Then a text file (list.txt) with the filenames to be concatenated:

file 'TestFile1.mp4'
file 'TestFile2.mp4'
file 'TestFile3.mp4'
file 'TestFile4.mp4'
file 'TestFile5.mp4'
file 'TestFile6.mp4'

Finally I ran the following command line in that folder:

ffmpeg -y -safe 0 -f concat -i list.txt -c copy output.mkv

It took ffmpeg about 6 seconds to create the new ~1.5 GB mkv file and there's no loss of quality. You could automate all that with a batch file.