Video Compression Advice...?

Question

Hello, I've had a digital camera (Ixus 700) for almost two years, and although it's a great camera, it offers no compression for the video clips i've taken. A 20 second clip is 40meg. My pictures folder is gigantic.

What is the best way of compressing these AVI uncompressed files but retaining almost perfect quality? I'd love to know a good lossless one, albeit apparently they don't save too much room.

Since these are treasured memories I don't want to distort/blur the image using a bad compressor... Any recommendations?

Cheers!

Answer 1

Compress them as MPEG-2
At least you will have DVD quality, and a regular DVD data disk will play ordinary mpgs on most DVD players sold today.

Here's the specific for a NTSC DVD file:
Type = MPEG-2 (*.mpg)
Frame Rate = 29.97 fps
Frame Type = Field Order A
Frame Size = 720 x 480
Video DATA Rate = CBR at 6000kbps (9800 max)
AUDIO 48000Hz, 224kbps, stereo, MPEG audio


With this, you will be able to author DVD disk at some other time.

Answer 2

Hey I have an IXUS800, but their pretty much the same thing so I know exactly what youre talking about.

First of all, just to clear things up, it does compress the video. Its a slightly higher compression than DV-AVI, which is used on MiniDV cameras (which offer the best quality for the consumer and prosumer range), so you're good on the quality part. Uncompressed would be about 5-6 times larger than the file sizes you have now.

As for the best compressor, I've found the best and easiest way is windows movie maker. Import your clips and do whatever you need, and then when you export, choose save to my computer, and then when it gets to the page with the compression options, go to the pulldown list. For me, the high quality video options work pretty well, because they offer pretty small file sizes, and its variable bit rate, so its not bound to one file size. If you need something for the web, or several hundred MBs is still to big, you can just click the option let movie maker choose the best option. And of course, you can always choose something with lower quality and size in the options box.

This is the easiest option for me. Also, if you want to edit in something other than movie maker, it might be the only option. I have premiere pro, and it doesnt accept the files. Only after I put them into WMM and make them WMVs can I import them into premiere pro. Hope this helps!

Answer 3

If you mean compress for storage, I believe you can find a compression application (ZIP) to make the files smaller for archiving. However, if you mean compression, like MPEG, read on.

If you are not going to edit these clips and simply want to save the file, you can do a couple of things. Be warned, however, that dealing with large files is time consuming, even in this day and age of processors.

If you are able to "rip" the video to your pc via firewire, then you have the ability to archive the native AVI file to a DVD burner, which is capable of at least 4.7GB and dual layers are now double that. The ripping process is in real time - 40 seconds of video takes 40 seconds to rip. The burning process, however, will take much much longer. And, simply burning the AVI file to DVD will not allow you to playback in a home theater or a PC. It becomes simply a data disc. Even though a PC can read the AVI file off of the DVD disc, the data transfer rate is so slow that your playback is extremely choppy. In order to see the playback in good quality, you actually have to transfer the file back to the harddrive, again, taking a long long time.

Now, if you want to preserve the quality AND the ability to actually playback the DVD in a home theater and/or PC, then you must use a DVD creation application which usually allows basic editing, menu creation, but most importantly, converts the footage to MPEG and creates a properly formatted DVD for use in any player.

Answer 4

Use this 100 % :
-http://virtualdub.sourceforge.net/ (choose what is best for you)
and I recommend to install DivX Pro 5.0.5 Code.
I'm sure you'll be satisfied .
Go to work !