What is the best way to compress an AVI file, if any, and should I even think about doing it at all. Is it impossible to do without losing quality?. I have about twenty 200 MB AVI files that I want to give a friend. Problem is he doesn't have a DVD player on his machine, so as it stands now, I'm looking at having to put 3-4 of them on about 7 CD's. I'm thinking that there has to be a better way, that's why I'm wondering about compressing them. My previous attempts to compress then using WinRAR failed either because I didn't do it right or whatever, but after I loaded the files into a new WinRAR archive, it was the same size as the original file.
I am guessing that the files are movies? What does the quality look like right now at 200mb? If they are indeed full length films, they are already tremendously compressed at 200mb, the smallest I ever compress is 700mb. I would leave them as is and just use the additional disks, IMHO.
No they are half-hour sitcoms. So the current size is just about right. I have thought about converting them to mpeg's, then burn them on to disk for my friend, then include a simple video converter on the disk, so he could convert them back to avi to watch on WMP. See he's not very tech savvy so I have to be careful.
It is possible to reencode them to make a smaller version. I encoded a movie from a DVD (90 minutes) to a 330MB avi file @ 320*240 resolution, so my son could put it on his Creative Zen (portable mp3/video player). Winrar is not the answer. That's lossless compression - not likely to squeeze much out of a avi file.
Winrar is definitely not a solution. Converting to a half size resolution is okay if you'll be watching the movie on a small screen, but if you want to use a TV an such, it'll be like looking through a colander. Just mail him a ~$15 gift card to get a DVD drive(I have a couple collecting dust).Or setup a home FTP server http://lifehacker.com/software/home-server/how-to-set-up-a-home-ftp-server-130806.php Or even easier,in the time that would take you to convert again, burn and mail the discs,just use MediaFire and save the quality(I get about ~500Kbs, U/D).
FTP server is a great idea. I once set up one on my home PC - Windows NT (about 10 years ago). When I got to work, I used it to send a bunch of files from my office PC to home.
use avidemux and resize them to 352x240 (vhs quality) and convert them by file size (choose that you want a file size of 100mb or 150mb). you can try different rates till you get the one you want. open avidemux/open your file/on the left video section instead of copy pick mpeg4 asp xvid/next press configure/and choose 2-pass file size and adjust accordingly/next press filter and choose resize. Next on the audio instead of copy choose mp3 lame/ you can adjust the audio bitrate lower to 96 or 64. Just remember if you choose 100mb size for the video file, the audio file might be about 25mb for a total of 125mb final size.
