Originally posted by RU42
Sorry - I didn't explain that very well. I have my own raw captures that are currently MPG2 huge files. The 15 minute CBJ Xmas I captured in 1 gig in size. My question meant to be, what should I convert/compress them too. Sorry - I was way unclear in my original post.
RU
Hey there! I somehow missed your message on irc. No problem, I just thought you were talking about the vids I encoded. Here's how I would work with your files depending on what I wanted:
To watch on tv: If I didn't already have a home theater PC setup next to the TV and my DVD player could handle the SVCD format, I would use Cinema Craft encoder to make a nice SVCD (mpeg2), so I could play the vids in my DVD player. If I still wanted to be able to watch them on TV through my DVD player, I'd make a VCD instead. Chances are if your DVD player can read burnable CDs, it can handle playback of a VCD you create. There's a database at
http://www.vcdhelp.com that shows what DVD players can play SVCD and/or VCD.
To watch on the PC and make it easier to share online - Definitely DIVX. With DIVX you have more choices for quality/sizes. I've been doing most of my videos in this format now because of the ease in which to share them online and the ease in which to play them in the dedicated computer I have hooked up to my TV. with DIVX, you can pack a higher resolution, higher bitrate video into a smaller file size than with SVCD and VCD. You can also possibly fit more on a CDR for storage depending on the quality you use. So if you're aiming to share your vids with everyone, I recommend giving this a try. Bamboo7 introduced me to using a program called Nandub. It's not too hard to use. you'd drag your source material into Nandub, go to the audio menu, compression and choose MP3 12KBps 96kHz for the quality, then the video menu and bitrate calculator. Put in the filesize you'd like (I normally estimate 10MB/min, so I'd put in 100MB for a 10 minute video). Click calculate and it will automatically figure out the video bitrate to use. Now go to file and click "two passes". Give your video a name, OK, give it a stats file to use, click OK and then walk away and come back whenever it is done. It will take a long while if you're on the slowest of machines (which I am) because it does two passes.. one to figure out the best way to compress the video and the second to actually compress it. With a high enough file size, your DIVX AVI can look just as good as the original, but be substantially much smaller. I forgot to tell you the Nandub settings to use. Check out this page for those:
http://nickyguides.digital-digest.com/nandub.htm
Those are the settings I use too. You may also want to look at options for resolution size and cropping parts of the video. Check out the
www.doom9.org forums for tips on that stuff.
Anyway...
Let me know if you have anymore questions.
