Minimizing file size of MPEG1 or AVI

WildBlue wrote on 11/11/2002, 10:18 PM

Hi. I have a video I rendered into MPEG1. It's about 1 minute long and 13MB at a screen resolution of 608x400. How can I make this file smaller, and 1) still maintain good video quality, and 2) allow playback on most Windows PCs? I'm trying to fit this file on a "business card" CD with other stuff on it already. I made the screen size smaller, but that didn't seem to help much. Would Cinepak-encoded AVI with certain settings allow me to reach my goal? Any other suggestions or settings I should try? Thanks! Rob

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 11/12/2002, 5:52 AM

The screen resolution doesn't really affect the size of an MPEG file much. In order to reduce the file size you'll have to encode at a lower bitrate. This will also lower the quality; there's no way around that. However, if you use a smaller resolution, the drop in quality will be less noticeable. Most videos on those business card CDs are encoded at 320x240 or even smaller. At that size you should be able to get away with a bitrate of 1,000,000 looking quite nice and 1 minute should fit in about 8MB or so depending on the audio compression.

WildBlue wrote on 11/12/2002, 9:03 PM

Thanks Chienworks. As you said, encoding at 1,000,000 bits/second got me right around 8MB. I have one other question-- would AVI coded with Cinepak be a better choice than MPEG1 if I'm trying to get this to work on as many Windows PCs as possible? If so, what is the main variable affecting file size with AVI? Thanks again for your help. Rob

SonyEPM wrote on 11/13/2002, 8:47 AM

MPEG-1 will work on just about any windows or mac machine (even those dating back to the Bush I epoch), plus you can make a VCD out of it and play it on many DVD players. If you need a universal format for the broadest possible audience, I'd use that. Quality isn't the greatest, but the MPEG-1 spec was closed around 1990 so the format isn't changing constantly (like it has been with wm/rm/qt and others).

WildBlue wrote on 11/13/2002, 9:41 AM

Thanks SonicEPM. Based on your comments, I will focus on MPEG1 encoding for this project. Rob