Video compression utility

[Sxotty]

I was woindering if anyone knows of a good cheap utility to compress video files to a given size.


I was putting some movies from VHS to my computer I use a hauppage PVR card and record them into an MPEG file. The file in question is 5.89GB. If I use a lower quality capture method it is 3.5GB but I want it to be 4.7GB obviously so it will fit on one DVD. Is there a utility like DVD2One that I can use to compress the mpeg to the correct size?

Anyway suggestions appreciated.

 

[Anonymous]

XVID is free and the best I know (link to binaries).

Vadi

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Xvid or Divx will do the job, but you'll only get playback on a PC unless you have one of the more exotic DVD players that claim to support these particular MPEG 4 formats.

 

[Sxotty]

Yeah I have used XVID in the past, but I was hoping for something so that I could burn it to a regular DVD and watch it on a DVD player.

The idea is to replace old VHS tapes with DVD's like on the silly commercial Anyway I tried using moviemaker that comes with windows and afew other programs that I have gotten for free in bundles but none seemed to work.

However DVD2one works it compresses the mpeg2 data on the DVD, I mean I got it thinking I could use it for this purpose but it doesn't work unfortunately. Anyway I appreciate the input. If no one knows of a utility that is ok, I will just have to figure something else out.

 

[BRiT]

Could always pick up one of those cheap $50 DVD players that also plays divx/xvid files. My solution was to pickup a networked dvd/divx/xvid/avi/mpg player, the GoVideo D2730.

 

[Simon F]

For MPEG2, maybe you could try TMPGenc. I think there was a trial version which seemed to work quite well - I think you were able to specify the target size, bit rate, or quality when you did the compression.

 

[Fruitfrenzy]

If you try to recompress the MPEG that you already have the quality will be poor.

Ideally you want to capture the video to something either uncompressed or close to it then use something like TMPEG to do the MPEG compression.
The down side to this method is that you need a lot of disk space.

Also note that TMPEG is slow. It gives very good results but it will take hours to encode your video if it is DVD resolution.

 

[pcchen]

Cinemacraft Encoder is much faster than TMPGEnc, but its trial version put a watermark on the encoded video. If you just want a one-time job done, TMPGEnc is a cheaper choice.

 

[Simon F]

Also note that TMPEG is slow.

Is it? Gosh, I seem to recall it seemed fast compared to the compressor software that came with my DVD drive

 

[Captain Chickenpants]

A good site with info on this type of stuff is www.vcdhelp.com

CC

 

[Fruitfrenzy]

Is it? Gosh, I seem to recall it seemed fast compared to the compressor software that came with my DVD drive

My DVD burner came with some software from Intervideo I think. I also got some software with my camcorder.

Both of them were able to compress the DV input video significantly faster than TMPEG on my system but the results were very disappointing.

In fact one of them (I don't remember which one) managed to encode the video at a higher bitrate than the DVD spec allows for even though it was set to encode to DVD format MPEG2.

As an example of TMPEG speed, yesterday I encoded 90 minutes of DV format video to DVD spec MPEG2 on my 3GHz P4 with 1Gbyte ram and it took around 6 hours.

The bitrate was around 5 Mbit/s and the quality was indistinguishable from the source (at least on my TV).

 

[Sxotty]

Ok, thanks for all the info, I will try out some of this stuff when I get home. (that will be like 5:30 CST)

I have a hauppauge 250 http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_250.html card which automatically encodes the video into MPEG2 I think, though the file just says it is an mpeg file type. There are only like 4 choices of compression for the card to do, I don't think it captures without compression, though I will have to see. I also have a x800pro VIVO, it willl be funny if it ends up capturing the video better than the hauppauge card.

 

[BRiT]

The haupauge card should have options to capture it as mpeg-2. It has hardware encoding capabilities. Though there are various encoding profiles you can use and even setup custom ones if you used different software. It's the card to have for high quality PVR setups.

 

[Tim]

I was woindering if anyone knows of a good cheap utility to compress video files to a given size.


I was putting some movies from VHS to my computer I use a hauppage PVR card and record them into an MPEG file. The file in question is 5.89GB. If I use a lower quality capture method it is 3.5GB but I want it to be 4.7GB obviously so it will fit on one DVD. Is there a utility like DVD2One that I can use to compress the mpeg to the correct size?

Anyway suggestions appreciated.

I think you should be able to record directly to MPEG2, and select the bitrate that you wan't. Making a standard DVD-movie that should be very easy in a program like Nero (or whatever software you use for your burner).

You could look at doom9.net, they should have some guides that fit your needs.

 

[Anonymous]

If your source is a VHS you should be able to use half rate resolution 352x576(PAL) 352x480(NTSC) without any loss in quality. Also, IIRC, you can go as low as an average 1691 kbit/s (allthough you will probably want to go higher than this) and still have a standard-compliant DVD. This sould give you up to 300 minutes SVCD-like quality on a DVD-5 (4.38GB) w/AC3 2ch audio. Allthough it will decrease quality you might want to try re-encoding your files as any real-time MPG2 encoder thades bandwith for speed when encoding. Again, with a VHS source, you might find a multipass re-encoded file acceptable when you consider the gain in playtime.