I download a concert off the internet. Half of the files play in Windows Media Player. While the other half will only play in WinDVD. So I am assuming the WinDVD files are Mpeg2??? Either way, I want to compress the files so that they are more upload/download friendly. In your opinion what is the best compression method to obtain decent to good quality, with a decent upload file size. If I could cut a 90MB file size in half that would be perfect. But I am not sure what is the best method. Obviously WMV, seems to have crappy quality, or maybe I converted wrong. WHat is the best progam? Should I convert the Mpeg2 to WMV, Asf, MOV, DIVX???? Any help would be so appreciated.
Right, .WMV and .ASF are crappy. .MOV I don't like, the images seem 'bulky' and are not very beatiful. 'Small' is often a synonimous of 'crappy', if you speak of movies. For movies, the best 'compression' is to avoid it: that is, MPEG-1 for VCDs (alas, 80' = 800 MB) and MPEG-2 for SVCDs (alas, 50' = about ['about', since we are speaking of VBR] 800 MB), that is, to avoid it. Stopping joking, the best compression I think it is, and which I use, is to reduce the movie into a MPEG-1 (352x240/288) [TMPGenc , motion search quality = very high quality] than apply DivX Multipass 'Portable Profile' (VCDs only) set at its maximum value (768 kbps). Alas, if the resolution is NOT VCD's , you have to use the 'Home Theater Profile' which has a maximum bitrate = 4000 kbps, so the file can be really huge or you have to trade between size and quality (and I don't know, for intermediate risolutions like SVCDs, which is the best tradeoff). For this reason I prefer to convert to VCD first, then to apply compression. Because it's better a VCD compressed with 768 kbps than a 600x400 movie compressed at 400 kbps (to have a decent file size). Therefore, the question is: what do you want to do? Sorry, you'll never manage to have a few tenths megebytes' movie you spoke of. A VCD movie 768 kbps multipass (= minimize the size examining it, first) becomes about 600 MB big (after all, you started from a 4.5 GB DVD movie, reduced to a 1.3 GB VCD movie, isn't it?). In synthesis: the best compression id DivX or, if you want a free codec, Xvid. WMV, ASF = crap. MOV = I don't like them, as I said. But, remember, there always a trade-off between resolution/size/quality during compression. Remember: a good DivX/Xvid compression of a 352x240 movie (almost no loss) can be very beatiful (original VCDs are), making a SVCD (or even a DVD) movie from a bad AVI or a screener is only a loss of time and work. Remember: garbage IN = garbage OUT. DivX has an encoding performance ('slow') which enlarges the encoding time but reduces a lot the final size. Xvid I don't know very well, but I think it will have a similar option. Therefore I decided that is better to avoid losses in compression of a medi-resolution movie than vice versa. But this is only my opinion... Try to ask to the DivX/Xvid forum, for further questions, they should be more expert...
QuEnc 0.59 beta2 is hecka lot better than tmpgenc. according to my recent observation, sorry i'm too lazy to post any proof for that remark why i wasn't on the band wagon earlier ? cause now it has constant quant mode. and Nic (the author) did said something about a radical code change... check out other mpeg1/2 encoders here. http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?s=1a171c99d1f2bf0c12259605840c1ff3&forumid=62 as for internet uses you would be better off going with mpeg4. the newer mpeg AVC (h264)(x264) is really good at shrinking the sizes without losing too much quality, but the price to pay is processing power, slow pc would not be able to play this very well. i think wmv soften too much. i prefer xvid 1.1 beta1
