Big File Sizes

Chris_13 · Post by **Chris_13** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 9:32 pm

After I record something with Ulead VideoStudio 11, I notice that the file is 17+ MB for just one minute

How can I reduce that big file size?

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 10:03 pm

I am sorry to have to inform you that 17 MB for one minute of video is not particularly large. It really depends on what format you used and what you are intending to do with the video. Remember that a single layer DVD will hold 4.3 GB of video at high quality settings, but that is only around 1 hour of video.

Uncompressed .avi files are the largest video files, running at around 65 GB (yes, that's GB not MB) for one hour of video -- or more than 1Gb per minute!! Makes your 17 MB seem small, doesn't it??? Next comes DV/AVI, which is used in a mini DV digital video camera, which takes up 13 GB for one hour. Then, there is a much more compressed format called mpeg-2, which is what is used on video DVDs, and as I have already said, in high quality format, that will take up around 4.3 GB per hour.

You can, however, change the rate of compression used in it, and by changing what is called the 'bitrate' you can fit more video onto a DVD. The high quality setting uses a bitrate of 8000 kbps. But if you lower that to around 6000 kbps, you can fit around 90 minutes on the same DVD; or lowering it to around 4000 kbps will allow around 2 hours to be burned to disc. But the quality at this bitrate could only be described as reasonable, and after that it drops off considerably.

There is also an mpeg-1 format which preceded mpeg-2, and it is mainly used for the predecessors of DVDs, which are called VCDs and SVCDs, and were burned to a CD and not a DVD. The quality is only average at best.

Beyond that, you get into extremely compressed formats which can produce high quality in a small file size. And this may be what you are thinking of. There is the general category of mpeg-4. But there are sub-sets of this called DivX (which is commercial) and XVid (which is open source). With them you can burn, for instance, a fairly high quality 90 minute movie to a CD (i.e around 700 MB). However, the problem with that is that you have to have a special DVD player which can recognise the DivX codec used to burn those movies -- though there are more of these on the market these days. Both DivX and XVid use the .avi extension, by the way. There is also a highly compressed format called Windows Media Video or .wmv which was developed by Microsoft as a competitor to these other codecs I have just mentioned.

In the main, these highly compressed formats are used for either viewing on a computer or display on the web or transfer to mobile phones or i-Pods. But they are all difficult to edit, and meant to be for viewing rather than editing.

So as you can see, your question is not as simple as you might have thought, and we need a lot more information to be able to answer it!

What devices are you using? What source are your capturing the video from? How exactly is the capture device (camera, VCR, TV capture card etc) connected to your computer? What is your computer operating system? What are your computer specifications?

Chris_13 · Post by **Chris_13** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 10:18 pm

I want to record football matches of my team (which it will spend about 90 minutes each match) and upload them to a server where people can download them. So as you can see i would like about 45 minutes to be in 500 MB instead of 1-2+ GB. I know that there are dvd recorders which can burn the whole match into a single dvd, then you can take the dvd format and convert it to an .avi and it will be just fine. That's what i want to be able to do with my tv card.

I am using AVerTV Super 007 TV card.

Operating System: Windows Vista™ Home Premium (6.0, Build 6000) (6000.vista_rtm.061101-2205)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Memory: 2046MB RAM
DirectX Version: DirectX 10
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT
Sound Driver Provider: Realtek Semiconductor Corp.

Do you need any other information? Oh and i am recording in Composite in ".mpeg" format.

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 11:37 pm

Then you will need to convert your mpeg captured video to one of the highly compressed formats I mentioned. Common ones would be DivX or XVid (for which you would need to have the codecs on your computer. XVid is open source and so, free. DivX has a free community codec, and a commercial 'pro' version of it.) Another possibility would be .wmv for which you will already have a codec on your computer installed as part of Windows. Even a direct mpeg-4 or, say, a QuickTime .mov file using, say, the high quality H264 codec (since you have VS11). But again, you will require that codec since I don't think it is part of the VS installation. Any of these will give you the result you are after.

The point is that you have to know what the other players have on their computers. There would be little point, for instance, using .wmv if some of the players use Apple/Macs... Most should, however, be able to use DivX or QT or at least easily download a player for them...

Chris_13 · Post by **Chris_13** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 11:54 pm

But i don't think i can reduce the size as how i want it (eg. to 500 MB) with those codecs (eg. divx).

Post by **Ken Berry** » Sun Jul 22, 2007 11:58 pm

Of course it will. That is the point of it. You can fit nearly 90 minutes of DivX on a 700 MB CD using its high quality settings. And the codec comes with quite a few pre-sets which allow lower quality settings and thus lower sized files.

Chris_13 · Post by **Chris_13** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 1:54 am

I did a test, I recorded something for one minute then I converted it with divx and from 17 MB it just reduced it to 7 MB. Is there any way I can make the file size smaller?

Post by **Ken Berry** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 2:00 am

What settings did you use in DivX?

Chris_13 · Post by **Chris_13** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 3:04 am

I selected the "Home Theater" option.

sjj1805 · Post by **sjj1805** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 3:09 am

The file sizes I created in my VEOH template are quite small and good quality. However what is good for one online site is not necessarily good for another. The template I created for YouTube is quite different to the one for VEOH.

Having said that you may be interested in:
VideoStudio: Rendering for You Tube.
Making and Sharing VideoStudio Movie Templates
Share Videos on the VideoStudio Channel at Veoh.com.

Chris_13 · Post by **Chris_13** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:28 pm

I got the xvid mpeg-4 codec, why doesn't it appear in the Ulead VideoStudio 11?

Chris_13 · Post by **Chris_13** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 12:56 pm

I suppose AutoGK could handle my job

Post by **Ken Berry** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 10:49 pm

Can't comment on AutoGK -- had never heard of it till you mentioned it. Looks interesting though...

Re XVid -- I don't use it, but normally the codecs only show up (at least on my computer) codecs only appear in VS after the computer has been rebooted.

Re DivX -- in the Home Theatre option, did you try reducing the bitrate? I think it is set by default to 780 kbps, but if you lower that, the resulting file will be smaller. Quality will begin to drop off, but you will need to assess what is the smallest size file which has a quality level acceptable to you.