Xtreme Video Compression

Is there anyway of compressing videos, without reducing the bitrate and stuff.

I tried reducing a 10 min 100MB (1400kbps) WMV file to about 40MB (800kbps) AVI file. Tried Xvid, Divx, x264/h264. Get about 108MB with 800kbps.

Tried VirtualDubMod, WinAvi, StaxRip. I can make sense of the basic UI and stuff, but the advanced settings are beyond my understanding (multipass etc etc).

Is there any specific (good, free/paid) software for this stuff, and any tutorials on how to do this xtreme encoding/compression....??

And is it possible to compress mpgs, and wmvs, in a similar way, without altering their extension (or whatever) ??

 

Google for video compression tutorial, video conversion, etc. There are fantastic applications for this - unfortunately, the freeware stuff doesn't really cut the mustard, IMHO. You can spend around $100 to get Sony Vegas (thumbs up from me!).

 

Did that (Been doing this since the past 3 days). Didn't find anything great though.

http://teek.info/guides/video/x264encode.html

Tried this out today, but didn't get what I wanted, and VDubMod is slow (probably not multi-threaded).

(I have Vegas 5.0 BTW)

 

In order to reduce file size, you have to reduce bitrate and/or remove data. There's no way around it. Lossless compression (like a zip file - remove the empty space but leave the data intact) only works for so long before you have to drop data, so it doesn't do much to drastically reduce the file size.

Here are a few sites I've visited for compression information:

http://www.insanely-great.com/features/010626.html
http://www.insanely-great.com/features/010625.html
http://www.wave-report.com/tutorials/VC.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/moviemaker/expert/digitalvideo.mspx

When re-coding video, expect to leave the computer running for a long time. It isn't quick - there's a lot of number crunching going on in the background. When I recode DV to something like MPEG2 or DivX, the computer is usually running for a few hours unattended. I tend to stick to MPEG2 or WMV, but I've had good results using DivX. YMMV.

 

Try SUPER. http://www.erightsoft.net/SUPER.html
As kegobeer stated, compression on video basically reducing quality since any video format (save for raw video, the equivalent of a bitmap in video form) is already compressed. It's like how .raring a .zip doesn't do anything.

 

Ohkay. I thought that the numerous advanced options in the UI may have some significance in compression and quality.

 

They do. You can reduce audio quality and increase video quality, or reduce bit rate to decrease file size, or change the video dimensions to reduce size, etc, etc. The best thing I can recommend is to do some trial and error experiments. That's how I stumbled upon a good balance of quality and file size.

 

+1 for VirtualDub and/or VirtualDubMod. It's not any harder to learn than any other video app (free or paid), but you will have to learn a little and do some trial and error to achieve what you're looking for.

Easiest way to reduce file size is to either reduce the bitrate of the video and audio streams or resize the frame size to something smaller (ie, 640x480 to 320x240). Best bet is to resize the frame to match that of playback device (ie, iPod, PSP, handset) or leave it as-is for playback on a PC or laptop. Also, your choice in codecs can have a significant effect on both the file size and overall quality. For example, a .vob file with MPEG-2/PCM could be compressed nicely to XviD/MP3, but you would probably achieve even better quality (at the expense of encoding time) if compressed to X.264/AAC at the same, or slightly lower bitrate. Just be sure to pick a video/audio codec and file container combination that matches your destination playback device, if something other than a PC.

As Kego said, it's all about finding the right trade-off in quality and file size.

For info about anything and everything related to video encoding, be sure to check out the Doom9.org forums.

 

Ive been tooling around with Xvid,Divx,H264,AVI files for years and have had some sucess, but unfortunately it does boil down to trial and error most of the time. Ive used a program called enhance movie 2.2 to improve image quality a little bit , and then used various other programs to reformat or encode into different compression formats for various applications, but it always comes down to trial and error. And it should'nt. Mabey I should give Sony Vegas a shot? One thing I can say for sure(And this advance has taken place within the last 6 months) is that the latest H264 compression format has got the best file size to video quality ratio to date. However when I re-encode files into a H264 format they never look as good as files that have been originally formatted as H264 by the pros. Will Sony Vegas solve this problem??

 

For what? For enhancing and cleaning you should try VirtualDub, AVIDeMux or if you want the best, and can do a little scripting, AVISynth.

 

Your diabolical avatar captivates my imagination, so I shall follow up on your sugestions and get back to you.

 

I mentioned Sony Vegas because kegobeer said it was a good program.