Tips/techniques for producing smaller video files

[FireMystDL]

Hey all,

 

I was looking for advice/suggestions/ "programming techniques" on how to make movie files smaller when they're actually produced?

 

For example, I have a VideoWave file which uses a 25MB wav sound clip. I thought that by maybe converting that WAV files to an MP3 it would reduce the resulting WMV file. It didn't.

 

I also have a VideoWave file which uses 3 separate segments from a 100MB MOV file. However, all those separate segments are from the first minute or two of the MOV file. If I were to chop up that 100MB MOV file into 3 separate movie files and then reference those in VideoWave instead of the one massive 100MB file, will that reduce the resulting WMV movie file produced?

 

Also seeking other tips/tricks?

 

Thanks!

[sknis]

Hey all,

 

I was looking for advice/suggestions/ "programming techniques" on how to make movie files smaller when they're actually produced?

 

For example, I have a VideoWave file which uses a 25MB wav sound clip. I thought that by maybe converting that WAV files to an MP3 it would reduce the resulting WMV file. It didn't.

 

I also have a VideoWave file which uses 3 separate segments from a 100MB MOV file. However, all those separate segments are from the first minute or two of the MOV file. If I were to chop up that 100MB MOV file into 3 separate movie files and then reference those in VideoWave instead of the one massive 100MB file, will that reduce the resulting WMV movie file produced?

 

Also seeking other tips/tricks?

 

Thanks!

 

 

If you want them to play on a standard DVD player connected to a TV, they have to be in the mpg2 (VOB) format. You can get almost 2 hours of video on a double sided DVD. Don't worry about file size.

 

If you want to play the movies only on your computer or on a portable device, then more compression is possible depending on your device.

 

A MOV file is already compressed so on a DVD, it will be larger.

 

You can get high compression with DivX format but your DVD player would need to play the DivX format. Creator 2009 will output to DivX but Creator 2010 will not.

 

Perhaps a little more about what you are trying to accomplish would be helpful.

 

 

 

 

[ggrussell]

For example, I have a VideoWave file which uses a 25MB wav sound clip. I thought that by maybe converting that WAV files to an MP3 it would reduce the resulting WMV file. It didn't.

Doesn't matter what the source file format is for video or audio. They will be converted to the output format.

 

I also have a VideoWave file which uses 3 separate segments from a 100MB MOV file. However, all those separate segments are from the first minute or two of the MOV file. If I were to chop up that 100MB MOV file into 3 separate movie files and then reference those in VideoWave instead of the one massive 100MB file, will that reduce the resulting WMV movie file produced?

No....When you use separate segments from the same file, the segments you didn't use will not affect the final output because those segments are not encoded to the final output.

 

So neither of these will reduce the file size. Why are you trying to reduce the file size? There are only two things that will affect file size: resolution and video/audio bitrates. For example, DVD HQ(NTSC) is 720x480@9Mbps. If you change the bitrate to 7Mbps, that will reduce the file size, but it will also affect the video quality. Changing the audio bitrate will also affect the file size, but not as much as video bitrate.

 

If you change resolution AND bitrate, that will reduce the filesize much more. For example, 320x240 @3Mbps and the video quality will be reduced accordingly.

 

This is rather generic and applies to any video/audio format and codec. So if your output is Windows Media Video or Quicktime, the same would apply.