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Right, .WMV and .ASF are crappy. .MOV I don't like, the images seem 'bulky' and are not very beatiful. 'Small' is often a synonimous of 'crappy', if you speak of movies.
For movies, the best 'compression' is to avoid it: that is, MPEG-1 for VCDs (alas, 80' = 800 MB) and MPEG-2 for SVCDs (alas, 50' = about ['about', since we are speaking of VBR] 800 MB), that is, to avoid it.
Stopping joking, the best compression I think it is, and which I use, is to reduce the movie into a MPEG-1 (352x240/288) [TMPGenc , motion search quality = very high quality] than apply DivX Multipass 'Portable Profile' (VCDs only) set at its maximum value (768 kbps).
Alas, if the resolution is NOT VCD's , you have to use the 'Home Theater Profile' which has a maximum bitrate = 4000 kbps, so the file can be really huge or you have to trade between size and quality (and I don't know, for intermediate risolutions like SVCDs, which is the best tradeoff). For this reason I prefer to convert to VCD first, then to apply compression. Because it's better a VCD compressed with 768 kbps than a 600x400 movie compressed at 400 kbps (to have a decent file size).
Therefore, the question is: what do you want to do?
Sorry, you'll never manage to have a few tenths megebytes' movie you spoke of. A VCD movie 768 kbps multipass (= minimize the size examining it, first) becomes about 600 MB big (after all, you started from a 4.5 GB DVD movie, reduced to a 1.3 GB VCD movie, isn't it?).
In synthesis: the best compression id DivX or, if you want a free codec, Xvid. WMV, ASF = crap. MOV = I don't like them, as I said. But, remember, there always a trade-off between resolution/size/quality during compression. Remember: a good DivX/Xvid compression of a 352x240 movie (almost no loss) can be very beatiful (original VCDs are), making a SVCD (or even a DVD) movie from a bad AVI or a screener is only a loss of time and work. Remember: garbage IN = garbage OUT.
DivX has an encoding performance ('slow') which enlarges the encoding time but reduces a lot the final size. Xvid I don't know very well, but I think it will have a similar option.
Therefore I decided that is better to avoid losses in compression of a medi-resolution movie than vice versa. But this
is only my opinion...
Try to ask to the DivX/Xvid forum, for further questions, they should be more expert...
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 22. February 2005 @ 01:11
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