Smackre

i record alot of showes on my comp. And when i record a 1 hour show its about 1.4 gigs ziped up. And i want to be able to save space. Ive had people send me good quality movies that are only 300 megs. Im just wondering is there anyways to keep the quality of the show and save it and get it around 300 megs....

it dont matter to me if i half to compress and then decompress it ever time i want to use it.

im just looking to save my self space on my hd. id be happy with like 700 meg files if possable.

__________________
Intel® Pentium® M Processor 730 (1.60 GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
17 inch UltraSharp™ Wide Screen XGA+ Display
1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 533MHz 2 Dimm
256MB NVIDA® GeForce™ Go 6800

vinaur

What's the file format of the video file that you want to compress??

__________________
If you multiply that by infinity and take it to the depths of forever, you will, perhaps, get just a glimpse of what I am talking about. --Meet Joe Black--

fallsauce

I save TV programs as .wmv files and they're around 200MB for an hour. The quality's good at 320x240, and OK full screen.
If you want a better compression, then I suggest Dr. DivX, I use it to compress DVDs down to about 400MB (this is the normal quality, optimal doubles that)

__________________
"Hey little kitty with your tail dragging on the floor
You could have a following in every town that you go"
Electric Six - I Invented The Night

SiN

yikes. dvd -->400 MB divx is quite likely unacceptable to many, i would think.

sorry, i just find that a bit shocking. if it works for you, great..but I wouldn't recommend it to others.

1 or 2 700 mb files are pretty standard.

__________________

Sty

well, go and take a peek http://www.doom9.net

it holds the info, tutorials and software for all your video compressing needs.

__________________
br,
Sty

I route, therefore you exist

Evil_Timmy

Best you can do for encoding on the computer is Xvid, loved by rip groups and video geeks alike. You can easily encode an hour-long (41-44 minutes, without commercials) show to 640x360 or similar, depending on the aspect ratio, and have it as a 350MB file. If you've ever downloaded a TV episode before, this is what you've watched (or ~175MB for a 20-22 minute 512x384 half-hour show). DVDs are generally done as 1-3 700MB files, depending on the length of the movie and whether it's a stereo MP3 or surround-sound AC3 rip. 700MB for an average-length movie is cutting things a bit slim as there will be noticable artifacting, especially on slight gradients of the same color (ie a dark background), so 400MB must be pretty painful. Multipass VBR encoding is always a good choice for archival purposes, as you can get better quality for the same filesize.

So, get VirutalDub and Xvid, and encode away (Doom9.net is a quality site for all sorts of encoding related help, as mentioned above).

d3cemberist

Yeah, I would check out www.doom9.org. They are THE place for video encoding questions and such.