I am looking for your opinion on the best codec to reduce the size of my video files which I captured from my camcorder.
I have captured my camcorder files via Vista Movie Maker and firewire which resulted in large files (ie 20 Gb for 1.5 hours) using the "raw" format. G-spot tells me it's:
Codec: dvsd DVC/DV video
25 FPS 720x576
Filesize: 19.8 Gb
I have a fast-ish computer (Dual-Core 2.8GHz) so I don't mind spending a lot of time encoding and can play the encoded videos fairly easily on this PC. I don't plan on using any older HW to show these videos.
Can you recommend a good format which will still have good quality, but won't take up 20Gb per video? Open codecs are preferred, since I wouldn't want support to stop in a few years time. Maybe if quality was still good, 2-4Gb for a video?
I found watching the original 20Gb movie in Windows Media was very smooth and good definition - strangely when using VLC, the audio was bad and wasn't nearly as smooth as if I used WM. If I can fix that too, I'd be very happy since I usually use VLC for everything.
I did a search on afterdawn for a similar topic, but couldn't find one applicable...
the best codec will be the h264 codec. That's all I use. It's open source and provides the best quality for me.
See if mediacoder (free) can convert those files for you. Mediacoder is very configurable, you can adjust the bitrate until you get the proper quality versus size that you want. I always stick with a bitrate of 900 kbs or higher.
Some people recommend MKV format as the best quality, but that format is still not mainstream. My avi h264 I can play them on all software players. The quality is good enough that when you convert them to dvd, they don't lose too much in the process.
