Which is the best video file format?

[Deepak]

I just got some video clips from my friend which she had recorded at a concert. For example the first video is in wmv format, res 640x480, duration 4:43 min and the file size is ~69MB. Isn't that a bit too much for a 4:43 min long video? Can I convert it into another format which is same quality wise but is smaller size wise? And which format should I convert it into? And how?

Thanks!

 

[max-pain]

Around 2 Mbit/s for the video isn't overkill for that resolution.

 

[Bludd]

Nothing is universally BEST. You also have to take into account the audio stream in those 69 MBs.

You could probably reencode the file to x264 at 1000 kbps or something with Vorbis audio at 80 kbps.

 

[ERP]

I think the latest WMV codec looks better for a given bitrate than most anything else I've looked at.
If you need it smaller, I'd drop the image size and the encoding rate proportionally.
I doubt you'd notice the size change to say 512x384 if your happy with the quality at 2Mbps. and at the same relative encoding level you could drop the video to 1280 Mbps.

 

[Hector]

H.264 all the way. You can try with x264 as stated above, or try the codec that comes with nero recode. It's very good. You can also try looking at www.doom9.org, the best site about digital video&audio I've ever seen.

 

[Moloch]

I wonder how the hell those *certain groups* get great quality out of 900-1200~ kilobits per second. using xvid?

 

[Hector]

With xvid and proper configuration you can get very high quality at dvd resolutions. For example, using 2 passes, Very high search precision, quarter pixel and GMC, and changing B-Frames modifier from 1.5 to 1 (this last makes the size of the file grow, but in my personal experience gives better quality as you don't see a so pronounced quality degradation between i frames).

 

[Blazkowicz]

I'm by not mean an expert in these coding things, but what I'd try is keep it in WMV (is that a WMV8 or WMV9? latter should be better) and just reencode to a lower bitrate (and maybe lower res).
The WMA audio stream could stay unchanged, no transcoding which could degrade it a bit? (although, sound quality is probably less than stellar?)

you can try with a 320x240 256kbits WMV video stream, would be a radical size reduction (I sometimes watch clips from the web of this kind, kind of watchable but with ffdshow's deblocking.)
WMV is good at low bitrates, I seem to like 256K WMV better than 256K MPEG4.
maybe try 512K 480x360, I don't know.

 

[Moloch]

With xvid and proper configuration you can get very high quality at dvd resolutions. For example, using 2 passes, Very high search precision, quarter pixel and GMC, and changing B-Frames modifier from 1.5 to 1 (this last makes the size of the file grow, but in my personal experience gives better quality as you don't see a so pronounced quality degradation between i frames).

Hmm.
Ill have to read up on xvid.
so many options...

 

[Fodder]

I suspect there's a fairly good reason the .. ah .. 'alternate distribution channels' are almost universally xvid.

 

[_xxx_]

I suspect there's a fairly good reason the .. ah .. 'alternate distribution channels' are almost universally xvid.

Because it's free? Doesn't do much else than DivX.

 

[Fodder]

Doesn't do much else than DivX.

Doesn't do much less either though.

 

[_xxx_]

Doesn't do much less either though.

Well no, but XviD comes from old DivX codebase. AFAIK they're more or less compatible. XviD encoded movies run just fine in my DVD-player too (it supports DivX).

 

[Hector]

Well, if you want to use the the asp features of mpeg4 in divx you have to pay for the pro version, whereas xvid it's free, and gives more quality.

 

[Ruined]

IMO the best is VC-1/WMV. The size of the video simply depends how high quality you want it to be. Odds are your friend encoded it at 2mbps VBR, if you want have him re-encode it at a lower quality - such as 1mbps VBR - and you can cut it down to 34mb. If that is still too much, you can simply cut off more bitrate until its the size you want - however you will lose image quality the more you shave off.

 

[Moloch]

Because it's free? Doesn't do much else than DivX.

Um.. being free has nothing to do with it.. do you think they can't get divx for free
I think it has a lot more things you can tweak.

 

[Simon F]

IMO the best is VC-1/WMV.

Is that based on technical analysis or just that you've run the compressor?

 

[Bludd]

VC-1 is less advanced than MPEG4 AVC/h.264 so from an efficiency point of view, AVC beats VC-1 if you turn on all the relevant features. It will also make AVC insanely slow on everyday computers.

I'd like to see some Conroe benches with x264. That would be interesting.

 

[pcchen]

Yeah. Quicktime 7 has a relatively simple AVC encoder (it's H.264 support is quite limited), yet it took about 12 hours to encode a 14 minutes video at 1280x720, on a 1.42GHz PPC Mac mini. According to some tests, a 1.67GHz Core Duo Mac mini is roughly twice as fast as a 1.42GHz PPC Mac mini at H.264 encoding.

If a high clock Conroe is twice as fast as a 1.67GHz Core Duo, then it will "only" need 3 hours to encode a 14 minutes HD video ...

 

[Blazkowicz]

I'd say there's probably not one encoding better than all others, you have to consider which is the most common, patent/proprietary hassle, CPU hogging, worthy or not incremental gains.

same way as MP3 will play on anything and compares not badly with a high bitrate VBR LAME file, WMA is an advanced codec but microsoft shit, real audio get people to install a terrible player (most don't know of Real Alternative), etc. (though OGG theora is not present on the level of OGG vorbis)

decent and no playback headache would be xvid, advanced but microsoft is WMV9, then you have a number of comparable codecs actually (AVC/H264, real video, VP7)

it looks like audio to me, lots of comparable things, and no miracle, bitrate plays a big part in quality.