I found a use for the product!

[mleejr]

Working with 3gp phone video. It's the best product for that.

Mostly what I do is just glue a bunch of clips together for one movie and upload it to youtube. Windows Movie Maker blows the pants off VideoStudio for this, except ONE case....3gp files. Android, default, video files.
The default video format for android phones (well, my EVO) is 800x480, 29fps, 3gp video. You can PLAY these with Windows Media player and even view them in Windows Movie Maker Live (windows 7) but when you paste these together and render, the rendered video has no sound.

I have Adobe Premiere and it flat out can NOT do 800x480. Amazing. If it's not one of it's defaults, it is screwed. It will add black bars. Windows won't render it with the sound (known bug from what I'm reading). So it looks like it's up to VideoStudio. I changed my project settings to 800x480, 29fps and render using default project settings and whola....it works. It is a RIDICULOUSLY large file size (like 1 gig a minute), so I use a video converter tool to change the format to WMV (or whatever) which knocks it down to a reasonable 30-50 megs a minute or so with no discernible loss in quality.

Not ideal, but it works.

As a side note, is there any reason this program produces ridiculously large file sizes on rendering?

Thx,
Mike

[DVDDoug]

As a side note, is there any reason this program produces ridiculously large file sizes on rendering?

File size depends on bitrate (kbps or Mbps) and playing time:
Bitrate = (140 x File Size in MB) / Playing time in minutes

Most formats use a variable bitrate, so you need to know the average to calculate file size. (The above formula is approximate, and the bitrate is the combined audio & video bitrates.)

With some formats you choose the bitrate, and with some formats you choose a "quality setting" and the encoder chooses the approprate frame-by-frame bitrate depending on the amount of detail & motion in the image.

Some compression schemes are more efficient than others. WMV, MOV, and the MPEG-4 variations are "highly compressed" and you can get reasonable quality in smaller files. (I don't know much about 3gp, but I assume it's a highly-compressed MPEG-4 variation.) DV is "lightly compressed", and you get very good quality (standard definition) files at 13GB per hour.

Most video formats use "lossy compression", so the lower the bitrate (with a given format), the more data is thrown away, and the lower the quality.

Mostly what I do is just glue a bunch of clips together for one movie and upload it to youtube....

...no discernible loss in quality.

In some cases you can re-compress with no noticeable quality loss, and other times you can't... I believe YouTube has download-bandwidth (bitrate) limitations anyway, and it depends on what you're starting with. If you were starting with a high-quality video, and making a DVD or Blu-Ray, or playing the video on a nice TV, you might see a quality loss.

[mleejr]

Thank you for your very detailed response
When I choose bitrate I usually do lowest common denominator. Out of all my files I choose the one with the highest bit rate and make it that by default. That way the loss should be minimal. Also, other programs still seem to produce smaller file sizes, even with similar specs, including similar bit rates.
I don't know.
I can always convert though so its not too big a deal.
Thanks,
Mike

[teknisyan]

Thanks for the share mleejr and remember the higher the a/v quality that you want to retain to your project the higher the video file that will be created.

[mleejr]

Thanks for the share mleejr and remember the higher the a/v quality that you want to retain to your project the higher the video file that will be created.

I just rendered a 10 min video or so....guess how big....
85 gigs. Yes, gigs. Ok, what in the world. 5K bitrate. I converted to wmv 400mb using a separate conversion tool with no discernible loss in quality.

[Bobcat]

As a point of comparison, I made a MPEG-4, 720x480, 29.97 fps, 4000k bps, 11:41 video and it was 354 MB.

[Ron P.]

Thanks for the share mleejr and remember the higher the a/v quality that you want to retain to your project the higher the video file that will be created.

I just rendered a 10 min video or so....guess how big....
85 gigs. Yes, gigs. Ok, what in the world. 5K bitrate. I converted to wmv 400mb using a separate conversion tool with no discernible loss in quality.

That's got to be a typo. Full uncompressed, RAW avi, file sizes are only 65 gig for an hour of video. You're saying your file size was 85 gig for roughly 10 mins, sorry not buying into that.

[mleejr]

Thanks for the share mleejr and remember the higher the a/v quality that you want to retain to your project the higher the video file that will be created.

I just rendered a 10 min video or so....guess how big....
85 gigs. Yes, gigs. Ok, what in the world. 5K bitrate. I converted to wmv 400mb using a separate conversion tool with no discernible loss in quality.

That's got to be a typo. Full uncompressed, RAW avi, file sizes are only 65 gig for an hour of video. You're saying your file size was 85 gig for roughly 10 mins, sorry not buying into that.

Not a typo. Absolutely it was. 100% positive because I was amazed. That was one of those things that sticks in your brain. Another mental note for it was I've already posted here about large file sizes and when I saw that one it really blew me away. It was the largest yet. I had another one that was 25gigs for about 5 mins of video.

I'm not at my home computer now but when I get home I'll try to get a screen shot or something. I will also try to get a reproducible test case.
I use fast video converter to compress it down to a reasonable size (under a gig).