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how to create compressed AVI file
Hello
I am using vegas to capture video. The finished product needs to be an AVI file.
2.5 hours of captured video translates into approximately 30 GB uncompressed AVI file.
My goal is to store this AVI file on my computer, while in the future I may convert the AVI to video_TS files to burn on a DVD to be played on a big screen.
My only question is… How do I get this AVI file down to around 1 GB or less in Sony Vegas? If possible, please elaborate on exactly what settings I need to adjust to compress this AVI file.
Thanks
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7 Replies
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DV.avi is about 13 GB per hour so that sounds about right. And it is actually compressed. DV.avi is about 5:1 compression. Uncompresssed avi would be 5x larger! Any compression you do to the DV.avi is going to affect the quality or resolution but will make for smaller files.
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As Terry said, you do not want to make these files smaller because that would mean you will be loosing quality that you can never get back. If you want to be a video editor, go buy a 1TB hard drive and forget about trying to make the files smaller. Video files are huge for a good reason… they carry lots of important information.
Don’t be fooled by the small files you see on the web. These are highly compressed and a lot of the original information has been lost. You do not want to edit with these. They are for delivery only. Keep your source footage in as high a quality format as possible. For you that would be 13GB/hr DV.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
ok – thnx for your suggestions although I am still looking for an answer.
I understand your points of view, now can someone tell me how to compress an AVI file using vegas.
Thank You
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The only way to compress an AVI file like you have is to convert it to another format (WMV, DivX, XviD, etc.).
As has already been mentioned here, doing that WILL affect the quality of your source video and, since your goal is to make a DVD from this footage, that’s NOT an option that is ever recommended. -
Yes what you say makes sense.
In this particular instance I am transferring old VHS tapes to the computer where they will be stored in AVI format. So as you can imagine the quality is not that great to begin with.
I have downloaded full length movies from the internet that are around 2 hours long and the AVI file is around 700 MB. These files play acceptably on the TV. The picture isn’t blue ray quality, although the aspect looks fine. For my purpose this level of quality produced by a 2 hour movie stored in a 700 MB AVI file is more than sufficient.
What I would like to do is find a way to get my 2 hour videos stored in AVI files around this size (700 MB) so I could store them and then burn them to DVD in the future or just play them on my media player connected to my TV.
Do I need a seperate application other than vegas to compress these AVI files or can I do it in vegas? If I need a separate application could you recommend one please.
Thank You
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There is no way that you can compare trying to save your low resolution VHS tapes (VHS is low resolution to begin with)to what you get when you down load a highly compressed movie from the net. They start at a very high quality and the same amount of compression will not effect them nearly as much. If you compress to a low resolution avi, when you want to put them on dvd you will have to recompress again to MPEG2 which will further degenerate them. IMO this would be unacceptable. Kind of like a third generation vhs copy.
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1 hour of video into 500MB is a data rate of about 1 Mbps, which (as has been pointed out) is very, very low and for Internet distribution only. Since you are trying to play your movies back locally and maybe burn to DVD someday, maybe consider that DVD-Video discs usually have data rates of 6-7 Mbps and you get about an hour of video onto a single-layer DVD, right? That’s a few gigs an hour.
I think I might recommend going with MainConcept’s MP4 (H.264) format at 6-7 Mbps. It’ll look better than DVD-Video and it’ll playback on your modern media player. Ideal for future editing? Nope, but it’ll work. You might even find that 2 Mbps looks OK, but 1 Mbps is reaaaaallly pushing it and I think you’ll feel that the quality is unacceptable at that rate.
The other idea that is implied in most of the posts here is that if even 4 GB per hour is too large, then you should very seriously consider getting another hard disk drive. I know $100 isn’t exactly cheap, but that’s like 250 hours of video, which is a lot of home movies!
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