Video Experts, I need help with compression!

Solo · Criminal Joined: 03 Mar 2003 Posts: 99 City: Seattle, WA

Just wanted some feedback on how to effectively compress data without losing the quality of the video? I'm using VideoWave5 and can save my work in many formats. What works best for you guys? MPeg, AVI, WMV, Real? What works best resolution wise? 352 x 240 w/ 29.97 FPS? Or higher res 720 X 400 ?

jvanick · Posted: Mar 09, 2003 6:39 am Post subject:

If you want just about everybody to be able to open int, go with WMV... either 320x200 or 352x240 and with either 15fps or 29.97fps... also, encode the audio at a lower rate, or consider mono audio... it'll help the quality of the video more than you may think.

-J

garveyj · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 877 City: Savage, MN

What about if you want to burn it to a DVD? I have been playing around with compression too, and the AVI files are at about 4GB, but that is way too big to put more than one video on a DVD. What compression would you recommend for that?

*chris* · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 982

omg man...what avi files r 4gb?? does it have an ungodly amount of footage in it? i dont know if u could burn an avi to a dvdr and have it play in a dvd player. i do know that if u can save to mpeg2 format, u can burn it to dvd and itll play

jvanick · Posted: Mar 10, 2003 7:24 am Post subject:

AVI uncompressed/DV Compression is HUGE.

To go onto DVD, you compress from the DV format into MPEG-2 at about 8Mbits/Sec or so... giving you 2 hours or so on a 4.7gig DVD.

-J

garveyj · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 877 City: Savage, MN

The file is a 30 min long clip. It is uncompressed, with Audio and all of the transitions. Thanks for the info...I have tried putting it into MPEG-2, but not sure about the bit rate. When I did it, the video came out all distorted...Is that something to be expected with all compression?

garveyj · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 877 City: Savage, MN

Or better yet, do you get better quality when you burn it onto a DVD instead of a normal CD? I have been playing with burning small clips to a CD, and that is where I notice the quality is kind of bad, but if it will look better on a DVD disc, then I will feel better burning it to DVD.

wake152 · Posted: Mar 10, 2003 11:04 am Post subject:

drink beer it helps everything

*chris* · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 982

yeah, if u encode the video for mpeg2 at a high quality and put it on a dvdr....it looks great. even if u encode it as avi/mpeg/whatever, if u get it encoded at a high enough quality, itll look fine. all my vcd movies r made at highest quality possible and they look just fine on my tv & comp. but yes, dvd encodes look nicer. do u have a dvdr drive? the one thing i hate about them is the fact that the discs r so d@mn expensive. Mad

garveyj · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 877 City: Savage, MN

I don't have a drive yet, but intend on getting one. I only have 5 tapes for the video camera, and would rather have it on a format that is easier to keep track of and that is more compatible with the stuff I have.

Thanks for the info.

*chris* · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 982

yeah, np...if ur dvd player plays vcd, id recommend encoding for that until u get ur dvdr drive. cause cdr are so cheap...and dvdr cost $4/disc basically. thats the lowest ive seen them and still be a good disc. its funny though, my player reads the dvdr faster than a normal dvd, it takes maybe 3-5 sec for the menu to pop up compared to the standard dvd which has to go through all the loading crap like the federal warning and all that stuff....d@mn thats annoying

garveyj · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 877 City: Savage, MN

what kind of burner do you have?

*chris* · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 982

umm..i have a pioneer dvd-rw and a cendyne/lite-on cd-rw. the dvd-rw rights at 4x, which doesnt sound like much, but if i remember right...2x dvd is = to 32x cd speed, or something like that. still takes about 20-40 min to author the movie and menu to the dvdr though, but thats just because of file size & the whole "new technology" issue. yeah whenever u get ur dvdr drive, remember to keep ur computers hard drive as empty as possible and defrag it regularly. otherwise ur just gonna be throwing discs away

garveyj · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 877 City: Savage, MN

Are you getting a bunch of buffer-underrun errors?

*chris* · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 982

no no...it burns the whole disc with no problems. its just the movies would play real $hitty. like the audio would start messing up and the screen would get all pixelated. so just keep everything nice and defragged

garveyj · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 877 City: Savage, MN

That would not be due to the media you are using would it? I know you said that you use DVD-R & DVD-RW, which is not as compatible as the DVD+R & DVD+RW...Not sure what difference that would make, but it could be the cause.....However I will make sure that my drive is cleaned...It is on a 20 GB drive all by itself.

*chris* · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 982

yeah, ur partially right about the media. u cant use a dvd+r/rw on a dvd-rw drive and vice versa. but my discs r dvd-r, so the media is fine, i just wasnt thinking when i went nuts the 1st couple days i had it. Razz

i hadnt defragged it in awhile, and i had a bunch of movies on the hd so they were taking up way 2 much space, so i dropped em off & defragged, and its worked fine since Smile

garveyj · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 877 City: Savage, MN

good advice...i will need to remember that in the future.

garveyj · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 877 City: Savage, MN

*chris*
Here is a link to media at Circuit city too...only 2.66 per disc...if you are interested.
http://www.circuitcity.com/frame1.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@0415358139.1047329468@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccdhadchkgffhjfcfngcfkmdffhdffk.0&upper=head.jsp&lower=frame2.jsp&department=Computer+Peripherals+and+Accessories&category=Blank+Media+%26+Media+Storage&right=productsearch.jsp&left=leftchildcat.jsp[/url]

*chris* · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 982

f**k yeah...i saw 15-pack for 40 bucks. i think thats the one ur talkin bout. im gonna have to order some Smile

BillJ · Posted: Mar 10, 2003 9:20 pm Post subject:

The software that does the compression will have a huge impact on the quality of the video. For example, I converted a 40 minute video into MPEG2 and burned a dvd and it took just over an hour to convert. I played the dvd and it looked terrible, with lots of obvious squares and low quality video with motion. So then I tried another program to convert the same video and set it at the highest quality setting. It took 9 hours to do the conversion (I have a 2.4Ghz P4 with 768M of RAM). I burned it to a dvd and played it and it looked awesome - just like a professional video.

So even though the compression settings were exactly the same, the quality was completely different because the second program was so much better than the first.

To answer the initial question, any compression will impact the quality of the video. And if you want to compress a video enough to post it on the internet in a reasonable size, then the quality is definitely going to suffer. Both .wmv and .mov (quicktime) are fine for the internet and produce files about 2MB per minute with reasonably high quality.

Reducing the size of the video from 720x480 to 360x240 and lowering the audio from 44khz to 16khz or lower will both result in a smaller file. Also make sure that the audio is being compressed.

garveyj · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 877 City: Savage, MN

Bill-
What program were you using to encode the video?

*chris* · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 982

yeah, no kidding....what was the 1st program & 2nd program u used to convert?? i can convert a 1.5 hour movie into mpeg2 in about 4 hours, and it comes out dvd quality. i have p4 2ghz w/512mb ram

BillJ · Posted: Mar 11, 2003 5:07 pm Post subject:

The program that took 9 hours was TMPGEnc Plus. It took so long because I had selected the highest quality setting. I ran another test using normal quality settings and it took just over 2 hours to encode and the quality was still decent.

I don't know how that program compares with others in terms of speed, but it is highly rated for the quality of the output and the flexibility it offers. When I'm burning a dvd I want it to be the highest quality I can make it. I hate seeing compression artifacts and other problems in the video.

jvanick · Posted: Mar 11, 2003 8:06 pm Post subject:

TMPGenc is the best that you're going to get for encoding without spending lots of $$$$.....

Try to keep your Variable Bit Rate MPEG2 files at 8mb or so and your fixed rate MPEG2 files at 9.6mb or so for best playback on set-top dvd players.

-J

*chris* · Addict Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 982

yeah, i used TMPGEnc Plus also. i havent used the highest quality setting for dvd, but i have used high quality. i wouldnt think there should be that much difference in encode times....but yeah whatever works Smile