reducing clip space

[puggyb]

i have been coverting my tapes to digital. after i save them and export them to my hard drive, i notice that in terms of megabytes they are very large. for example, i converted a clip that is 6 minutes long; it was 63mb. i then converted it from wav. form to mp3 and reduced the size to 53mb which is still really large. i have clips that are longer in lenght but smaller in size.

what do i have to do to save space?

[ggrussell]

When compressing audio files with MP3, you can lower the quality to make smaller file sizes. We need to know which application you are using though to be more specific.

[sknis]

i have been coverting my tapes to digital. after i save them and export them to my hard drive, i notice that in terms of megabytes they are very large. for example, i converted a clip that is 6 minutes long; it was 63mb. i then converted it from wav. form to mp3 and reduced the size to 53mb which is still really large. i have clips that are longer in lenght but smaller in size.

what do i have to do to save space?

 

I'm not following you exactly. What kind of tapes? The size of the wav file is about right. How are you converting them from tape to digital and then exporting them to your hard drive? Do you have a Roxio product? If so, what application are you using?

 

If you are compressing audio files, the numbers do not seem to make sense by a factor of about 10. An approximate number from wav to mp3 is a reduction to about 10% of the original. That compression saves disk space but you lose a lot of the audio quality. You may not hear it but others may. You will if you play one after the other for a comparison. Also, there are several qualities of mp3 files so that 10% may vary.

There are other formats to compress audio files that may be better than mp3.

 

I assume that you have a laptop with a small hard drive. Consider buying a large external hard drive - USB connected to your computer. That will give you a lot of space for those files (even in wav).