Video compression

rupan

Member
Well I got my old capture card running and can finally get some of my \"archives\" online. I found some great old stuff from the early 90s like a 4th of July TV special with spots featuring a Mickey\'s Starland promo and the opening number to the Dick Tracy Diamond Double Cross stage show. I\'ve also got a full resort TV loop from Spring 1993 I really want to put up provided I can fix the audio issues.

I was wondering if any editors out there had any suggestions for good video/audio compression settings. The stuff my capture card spits out is way too big and I\'m running them through VirtualDub to apply compression. The default settings are 320 x 240 with 16 bit video sample size and MS-YUV compression at 29 fps. The audio is 1411kbps at 16 bit and PCM format.
 
Have you tried Divx or Xvid? These codecs seem to put out great quality at a reasonable file size. I haven\'t done much editing myself, so I don\'t really know much about the actual settings.

I\'m really looking forward to that 1993 Resort Tv Loop. I\'m the one who requested old Resort Tv Loops a while back.

:thumbsup:
 
It would be great if you could provide hires versions. I try to provide 720x480 so it can be converted to DVD. Honestly, I wouldn\'t do much of anything with 320x200 resolution videos.

Divx or Xvid is fine, probably better than doing an MPEG-2 format.

That\'s my take on it though...
 
I\'d love to have these in high res to be able to put on DVD and preserve for the future. Unfortunately, my capture card is really old and won\'t do anything larger than 352x288. Eventually I\'ll buy something new and get some really nice captures, but for now it\'s all I\'ve got to work with.
 
No offense, but I don\'t think you need even bother making videos at that resolution. Most people won\'t even bother watching them. They\'re picky, heh. :)

You don\'t really need a fancy internal card to do video conversions. There are many external USB devices, and USB offers more than plenty enough bandwidth for transferring high quality video. Also, any device that will convert the video into DV format can be used with any Firewire (also known as 1394 or i.Link) plug and a program that will capture DV feeds. Most digital camcorders can do this conversion, as well as many other devices.
 
I would watch it because I\'ve been wanting to see that Resort Loop for a long time. Something is better than nothing.
 
The video compression method which I reccomend is DivX, along with LAME MP3 to encode the audio.

Also, if you\'re feeling lazy, at www.divxlabs.com they have a program called \"Dr. DivX\" which will analyze your source video and suggest encode parameters for you. It\'s an open source program, though, so it\'s not 100% awesome.

I also use a program called StaxRip, which is like Dr. DivX, except its purpose is to bring together programs developed seprately (such as AviSynth and VirtualDub) to work together in an automated envrionment. It is a very good program!
 
Thanks for the suggestions. I\'ve got some decent looking/sounding settings working for me now. :) Going to check out those alternatives to internal capture cards too.

I\'ll go ahead and make the videos even at the smaller size. I\'ve certainly seen worse looking videos than the ones I\'m ending up with floating around out there. Besides, this is stuff I haven\'t seen anywhere else online. Someone might want to see them. (Like nelsonj3)
 
If you\'re careful, you really can get some OK looking video going, don\'t be afraid to pump up the settings to keep it looking nice.

Remember 1/2 D1 (NTSC) which is DVD spec is 352x480 which could look surprisingly good. It\'s probably equivalent to VHS. I was just playing some on my 57\" TV and was very impressed.

Just don\'t lose those masters sounds like you have some good stuff there.
 
kirky said:
If you\'re careful, you really can get some OK looking video going, don\'t be afraid to pump up the settings to keep it looking nice.

I would actually oppose this with a caution that there is no need to needlessly increase the quality of the DivX video compression by endlessly increasing the bitrate. At a resolution like what you\'re looking at, you could probably get decent looking video at bitrates even as low as 400kbps. From my DV video camera, I encode the video to DivX with a resolution of 720x400 usually at 1100 or 1200kbps, depending on how much motion there is in the video. The resulting video quality is awesome. For your much lower resolution, I would thus guess around 400kbps.

If you can afford the CPU time (or if your computer is fast), instructing the codec to encode with the CPU-heavy algorithms (the \"insane\" quality one) will yield the highest possible quality without needing to increase the bitrate.
 
Yeah, I\'m using between 600 and 800 kbps for my files. Going beyond 1000 I don\'t see too much of a gain in video quality, but a massive gain in file size. I\'m watching the clips full screen on my PC and they\'re very watchable.
 
nelsonj3 said:
Rupan,
Have you been successful in capping the Resort TV loop? I\'d love to see it! :D

Yep, I\'ve got it on my comp, but I was waiting for the torrent instructions to be put back up on the site.
 
Rupan, I have written a guide for uploading Torrents on Azureus in this Forum. See if that helps. You will also have to PM SirLamer for upload priveleges. If you want me to see the file, you can send it to me on Yousendit.com or maxupload.com.

Thanks!
 
rupan said:
nelsonj3 said:
Rupan,
Have you been successful in capping the Resort TV loop? I\'d love to see it! :D

Yep, I\'ve got it on my comp, but I was waiting for the torrent instructions to be put back up on the site.

Oh dude, with midterms and all, that\'s gonna take awhile, heh. :p

If you want to post something, PM me and I\'ll send you what you need to know.
 
nelsonj3 said:
Rupan, I have written a guide for uploading Torrents on Azureus in this Forum. See if that helps. You will also have to PM SirLamer for upload priveleges. If you want me to see the file, you can send it to me on Yousendit.com or maxupload.com.

Thanks!

Thanks for putting up the instructions, nelsonj3! I can tell you\'re really excited to see this video. :D Sorry it\'s taking me a while to get it together. Work stuff has been keeping me swamped lately. I just got Azureus installed and will be messing with that now to make the torrent. I do want to try out this h.264 codec almandot mentioned though so I\'ve got that downloaded and I\'m going to re-compress the source video to see what I get. Again, sorry about the wait but it is coming, I swear! :)
 
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