.avi File Compression S/w

[a269652]

Been downloading my camcorder movies to the laptop in .avi format. File sizes huge therefore need some compression s/w ... what do you guys use/ recommend?

[chiliwasabi]

What software are you using to download the footage to your computer and what are you going to do with the footage?

You can greatly reduce the file size by reducing the data rate. The amount of compression you apply depends on a variety of factors such as what you intend to do with the video (to send by email, burn to disc etc.) and how much picture quality you are prepared to sacrifice.

[Simmo]

.avi is not a video format, it's just a container file. Your camcorder probably records in MPEG2 format (Standard DVD format) , you could convert to Quicktime or MPEG4 / XviD to save space.

[Firefoxx]

Actually, most camcorders that record to tape are recording in the DV format. This, when downloaded to the computer via firewire, will result in an AVI DV file (type 1 or type 2, depending on what program you used). File size is approximately 12GB per hour of footage. Only HDD and miniDVD based camcorders record to MPEG2 format (which is lossy, and why they have bad picture quality), and even then it's a proprietary format for camcorders (it's not really the same as DVD format).

Pretty much any video editing software (premiere, vegas, videostudio, etc) will be able to open AVI DV files. You can then choose to save it to another format, like Xvid, divx, etc. Only newer programs will recognize the proprietary mpeg2 format from HDD and DVD camcorders.

For tape-based camcorders, it's usually wise to keep the original tape in case you need it later. *Don't* re-use tapes (they're cheap, about 100 baht per tape) since they are likely to lose their data on subsequent recordings.

[Plus]

Download Virtualdub, it's perfect for this kind of jobs and is totally free. Compress your video in divx or xvid for storage on the computer/Data CDs.