Reducing the size of a AVI file

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Joined: 07 Sep 2008
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Im tranferring movies from my Digital Video Cassette(dvc) 2 my computer. Thse are coming in as AVI files, and taking up alot of space and memory. Does converting them to mpeg or wmv files reduce them in size? if so ho is it done, if not what can reduce the amount of memory currently being used

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Joined: 20 Nov 2004
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Out of curiosity, what codecs (audio and video) do the AVI’s you obtained use? (If you’re unsure use a tool like gspot, avicodec, or mediainfo to find out.) I would guess some flavor of DV (DVSD, DV50, or something similar).

I don’t know much about the compression rate of DV, but you could try re-encoding the contents using VirtualDub or NanDub (both freeware and use the same interface; NanDub supports variable bitrate (VBR) audio though).

Open the source in VirtualDub. Click Video, Compression. Then pick a codec. These days DivX and Xvid are the popular choices (both MPEG-4, part 2 family codecs). Then click on the configure button to adjust the encoding parameters to your liking*. You can adjust quality and size that way. You can choose other codecs if you want and play with them to see the results you get. Do the same for the audio tab, click audio, full processing mode (the default is direct stream copy, which will copy the audio stream unmodified, but this may not be good if you use something like uncompressed PCM audio), then audio, compression.

For xvid encoding parameter explanations, read this, for divx, read this (nothing to fear - the exe just extracts a pdf and adds a start menu shortcut).

If you need more guidance, get back to us.

lucas1184

Guest

I’d like to post an AVI on youtube, but it’s way too big, 34 mb for a 6 minute clip. The codec is DivX. Do you have any suggestions to shrink the file, to make it possible to upload?