# Compressing mpeg files without losing quality?



## TheFamilyGuy (Apr 8, 2004)

I've been capturing video with a Dazzle DVC 150. All is well except that file sizes are huge. I captured for 18 seconds and the file size was 14mb. Can I convert these files to another file type to make them smaller, or compress them somehow without losing the quality of the video?


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## tgal (Apr 6, 2005)

*A good place to get good information for questions of that type is http://www.videohelp.com/ it is an awesome resource and I highly recommend it.*


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

MPEG files are already compressed, further compression pretty much has to lose quality, the nature of the beast.


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## TheFamilyGuy (Apr 8, 2004)

Alright, well what about converting them to a different file type. Is there some other file type I can convert them to that will drop their size, but keep the quality? If not, it's ok because I found a way to do it that cuts them down to about 1/3 their original size with just slight quality loss, but if there's something better, then that would be great too. And I think they're MPEG2's actually, but I don't know how much that matters. I converted them to MPEGs and they looked horrible.


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## JohnWill (Oct 19, 2002)

Read my previous reply, the answer is no.


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## tdi_veedub (Jan 29, 2004)

As JonhWIll stated, you can't compress anymore without degradation. However, the mpeg files can be compressed into divx or xvid files. The files will be much smaller, depending on how much quality you want to lose. I have found that 60% quality still looks good on a standard TV upto about 30". Forget about trying to do this and expect it to look good on a HDTV set. ...


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