Compress to very small file

[Rich Rubasch]

Are you looking for an MPEG-1 or an MPEG-2 file? Or an MPEG-4?

What are your current settings?

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media

[Terry Moore]

It needs to be an MPEG-1 file. I’m not sure what you mean by my current settings. I have made about 20 files with different setting and can’t get it below about 4.5MB. I have even varied the file type and size when exporting from FCP so I start out with a smaller file in Compressor.
I am new to Compressor but have changed about every setting I could think of to reduce the file size with no luck.

Thanks for replying to my request. Hopefully this added info will help you help me.

[Daniel Low]

I don’t use compressor anymore but I’ve used Episode to create a bunch of 1 minute MPEG-1 clips that came in at about 2.4MB.

Settings:

Video
192×144
25fps
250kbit/s

Audio
32kbit/s
Mono
22050Hz

They didn’t look ‘too’ bad either 😉

[Ben Waggoner]

That’d work.

2 MB in 53 seconds requires

(2 MB * 8000 Kb/MB)/53 sec = 301 Kbps

My compression blog: https://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/

My compression class at Stanford: https://digitalmediaacademy.org/courses/video-compression-training.html

[Terry Moore]

Thank you for all your posts. However, I still don’t think my question has been answered.

How do I do it????

I understand how it works mathematically. But when it comes to actually making the file in Compressor, how do I do it? What settings do I need? I have reduced everything to the smallest setting I can find but still end up with a 4.6MB file.

[Daniel Low]

Can you supply us with a detailed run down of what settings you have now that give you the 4.6MB file?

[Terry Moore]

Starting with an .mov file exported from FCP.
Placed into Compressor v3.0.1
Dragged and dropped MPEG-1 setting from MPEG-1 preset folder
In the Inspector I changed from DVD to Web and reduced Bit Rate to 0.50 (the lowest it will go)
That is all the settings that I can change (except for Cropping which I don’t want to change).

Back at the Inspector Summary it tells me that the Estimated file size is 4.44MB
Here are the other settings displayed in case it helps:

File Extension: mpg
Audio Encoder:
Format: MPEG
Sample Rate: 48 kHz
Channels 2
Bits Per Samle: 16

Video Encoder:
Format: MPEG1
Width and Height: Automatic
Selected: 320 x 240 (I was unable to change this setting)
Pixel aspect ratio: Square
Crop: None
Padding: None
Frame rate: (100% of source)
Selected 29.97
Frame Controls: Automatically selected: Off

[Daniel Low]

Looks like you’ve hit one of the limitations of compressor; if you can get the frames size set to smaller than 320×240 and the datarate to lower than 0.50(?) then you’ll not get the file sizes you need.

An investment in Episode is a good investment. As far as I’m concerned it’s a far more capable encoder.

[Terry Moore]

Thank you for your help.