Need to make video file SMALL

CVM wrote on 10/27/2005, 6:04 PM

OK,

I've tried six ways from Sunday to get my five minute demo reel down to an MPEG of manageable "download" size (less than 10 megs).

I've reduced the frame rate, the screen size, the video/audio quality, etc... and can't get it less than 80 Megs (for comparison, I made a low end WMF and got it down to 18 Megs).

Can I get my five minute video to 10 megs or less via MPG? Would I want to show my work that way? What's the minimum file size you'd recommend?

Thanks, all

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 10/27/2005, 6:20 PM

The frame rate, screen size, and quality settings have nothing to do with the final file size. The size is determined solely by the length and the bitrate. To fit 5 minutes (300 seconds) into 10MB (80Mbits) do the math: 80Mbits / 300sec = 273Kbps. That has to be split between both the audio and the video, so something like 256Kbps video + 24Kbps audio would be 10.5MB.

Hate to tell you this, but MPEG at 256Kbps is awful. In order to make it look good you'd probably have to use a frame size of 160x120 at 15fps. This will be a very tiny frame and even then it will probably have a lot of artifacts.

You will probably have to use WMV or MPEG4. WMV at 256Kbps with two-pass encoding is usually passable for a web video. If it has low movement use 15fps instead of 30fps for a clearer image.