# video compression



## Martial33 (Nov 1, 2002)

does anyone know of any free video compression tools that one could download?

Im trying to get 9.3G onto a 4.7G DVD disk. My first attempt was successfull using Roxio Video Wave 7.0 however the output was set to "playback on this computer". The picture turned out clear on DVD but its a bit choppy, so I tried changing that setting to "good quality, small file" but a 2hr movie is still coming up to 9.3G in this format.

There is also a setting "Fit to Disk" which I tried but for some reason, it gets half way and stops, ruining the disk (gone through several this way so far).

(see this thread)

So Im hoping to be able to compress the file first, then import it to VW7.

Does anyone know of any program like that? or other workaround?

...Maybe even a "converter" program -- as it is, I cannot import VW7 file or Windows Movie Maker capture into Premiere because Premiere is only set up to accept firewire input. (not sure what kind of file that is). But Premiere is great for editing, colour correction, etc -- why cant one program do it all?


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## thecoalman (Mar 6, 2006)

Martial33 said:


> does anyone know of any free video compression tools that one could download?


http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=vso_DivXtoDVD



> so I tried changing that setting to "good quality, small file" but a 2hr movie is still coming up to 9.3G in this format.


File size is determined by the bitrate alone, for 2 hours on a 4.7 GB disc you need to use about 4500kbps. Hoe that equates to the quality settings I have no idea.



> There is also a setting "Fit to Disk" which I tried but for some reason, it gets half way and stops, ruining the disk (gone through several this way so far).


How much free space do you have on your HDD? Any video program is going to require X amount of free space to do a conversion.



> because Premiere is only set up to accept firewire input. (not sure what kind of file that is). But Premiere is great for editing, colour correction, etc --


I'm not familiar with Premiere but the firewire you are referring to is for importing video from a video camcorder. This page list multiple format you can use.

http://www.mediacollege.com/video/editing/adobe-premiere/import/


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## MysticEyes (Mar 30, 2002)

> Im trying to get 9.3G onto a 4.7G DVD disk. My first attempt was successfull using Roxio Video Wave 7.0 however the output was set to "playback on this computer". The picture turned out clear on DVD but its a bit choppy,


What type of file is the 9.3G... what's the extension?


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## Martial33 (Nov 1, 2002)

well Folks..

since I couldent capture sound through VW7 I used Windows Movie Maker and the file type under properties says "Windows Media Audio/Video file". I tried some other settings and got the size down to 741 MB

I moved the file into Video Wave 7 becuase WMM wont burn DVDs. Before burning, Video Wave 7 gave me an error saying its too large for the disk so I clicked the option, "fit to disk". part 1 of 6 of the buring process wnet well, only took a few min. but once it gets to part 2 (encoding) it sat there for over 24 hrs. Burner light still flashing I shut if off cause even if it was going to work, thats an unacceptable time period.

went to this site http://www.sharewareguide.net/ and just DLed "ImTOO DVD" says it will burn most files to DVD in 3 easy steps.

[really frusterating since purchasing lots of expensive Adobe software>:~( ]

size of disk.. well I used to have a 250G external drive that I was keeping footage and projects on but that drive is in the shop cause it failed within the first 60 days - they are trying to recover my data from it - so meanwhile, Im using the main drive, 250G of which 18G is used up by progams and some files so there is still lots of space left. This is a pretty new PC, about 90 days old now, AMD 64 Athlon, 4200 board dual core, 2GB ram, 256M GeForce card.

Ironically, I had a trensflas card go down about the same time the external HD went down. The data cannot be read from either device.

the store with the hard drive said "the hard drive is physically fine, its the software within the drive that is defective" and they continue to try to get my data off it (over 3 weeks now) the other store about the TF card, says "cards sometimes fail"

Isent it suspicious that they both go down at the same time? could it have been a virus? Although I have up to date Trendmicro running (which updates itsef daily).

2) both devices were external devices - does that point to USB?

the hard drive caused the machine to cycle on, off, on,off like it was possessed. One guy in the store said "it could be a short."

is it the hardware? The software? or ME?

will check out the links, thanks so much for your help.


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## thecoalman (Mar 6, 2006)

> since I couldent capture sound through VW7 I used Windows Movie Maker and the file type under properties says "Windows Media Audio/Video file". I tried some other settings and got the size down to 741 MB


I have no idea what you're doing here but if you're capturing from a video camera you're going about it wrong. you should be capturing as DV-AVI which you import into whatever editor you want to use like Premiere or encode it directly to MPEG or..... I'd suggest you start over and list exactly what it is you're doing step by step, Starting off where the video came from is good starting point.



Martial33 said:


> went to this site http://www.sharewareguide.net/ and just DLed "ImTOO DVD" says it will burn most files to DVD in 3 easy steps.
> 
> [really frusterating since purchasing lots of expensive Adobe software>:~( ]


Again Premiere will import multiple formats, I haven't used it but I can tell you it's far more capable than any of the products you have mentioned as far as editing video is concerned. Read the manual. If you don't know how to drive it's not the cars fault. Premiere is an advanced editing tool, you're not going to learn how to use it overnight. It would take years to master all that you can do with it.


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## MysticEyes (Mar 30, 2002)

> What type of file is the 9.3G... *what's the extension*?


.???, Whats the last 3 characters of the file after the dot.


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## Martial33 (Nov 1, 2002)

Mystic, its "WMV"

....All right, let's take it from the top.

Back in the early 90s, I shot a professional video. The footage sat under my desk for nearly 10 years awaiting the digital age.

Once the digital age was upon as I did most of the editing to my footage itself but was never able to burn a perfect Master DVD. Instead I turn the project over
a group of guys that were shooting rock videos. They finish the project up for me in a matter of days using Macintosh computers and back then, the brand-new Final Cut Pro.

Fast forward to today I've been trying to output a professional Master DVD since then and have not been too successful.

I recently purchased a new system based on the Adobe line of software I purchased Premier Pro 2.0, Encore DVD 2.0, After Effects 7 and Photoshop CS2.

The system is an AMD Athlon 64 -- 4200, 2G RAM, 256 meg graphics card, LG 16x dual layer burner with Lightscribe, a 250 GB S.ATA hard drive as well as an external hard drive also 250 GB which failed in the first 30 days. The store has the drive for the last three weeks saying that they're trying to get my data back from it -- the data represented about 150 GB of video and hours of painstaking editing work. About the same time, I also had a 256 meg trans-flash card fail, which was also plugged into the machine from time to time -- could the two be related?

In spite of purchasing the brand-new computer and fancy software, I've still not been able to produce a professional DVD. Generally I am getting errors which stop me and just before the burning process. The errors are;
1.	Error parsing mpeg metadata file. Deleting or Renaming (file name) will allow you to import but any markers will be lost. [This was in Encore DVD 2.0 and in fact there was no importing the entire project, a slideshow, was created within Encore not imported from somewhere else.
2.	Internal software error\vobulator \block planner CPP line 217

I was able to burn the slideshow once however the last chapter marker (out of five) was not accessible -- the TV remote control would not go to the last chapter marker however when you check it on the system using preview, it worked fine. Thus, I tried again and got the above errors.

Meanwhile it took all the time to edit these projects and only to find out that I couldn't burn them. So later I got smarter, I think, and tried to just do some burning without making a huge project just to see if that's where I was getting bottlenecked.

I took out my VCR and attached it to Dazzle hardware which (analog to digital converter) plugged into USB and tried to start capturing some footage (to save the time of actualy editing a new project) using Roxio's video wave version 7 -- nothing I could do could make the program and record the sound. I tried all kinds of different settings -- under audio there was a setting for a sound card or a setting for the Dazzle hardware. When I tried to click the Dazzle hardware and then click OK it would always revert back to the Audigy soundcard.

So then I went back to Windows Movie Maker and captured it using that program (sound and all) but WMM would not burn a DVD! So I imported the WMV file back into Roxio's Video Wave 7 to try to burn it. On the standard settings instead burned once but the standard settings only allowed for a very low quality setting and the result was a very choppy video, certainly not professional.

I thought maybe it was because the file type was not on par with the different program so then I tried U lead's Studio 8, hoping to be able to capture and burn within one program. It was able to capture the video and sound, but when I tried to burn, it ran for hours and hours and eventually gave me the error and DVD R-- INC-- SBT I &#8211; 2A -- 02 -- 04 -- 09 -- 01 then in brackets 93006: 1:0

I also tried importing the WMV file into Adobe Premier 2.0 which it did accept but it was trying to burn the file for over 24 hours -- now whether that was going to be successful or not I do not know because 24 hours is not acceptable to burn a two-hour movie so in that case, I canceled the process and ended up with another burnt out disk. (So far I've trashed many disks).

Prior to all this, some of my friends told me I should buy a Macintosh computer with Final Cut Pro but first, it cost a lot more and second I've never used a Macintosh computer or FCP so I thought I would stick to a PC-based system.

Should I take a huge financial loss and sell the PC for what I can get and move to a Macintosh based system with FCP?

The retail store won't help me out because they say that there PC is working properly and it's just my software and software people won't help me out because they say it's the PC and there are no guarantees on either as I found out in -- in the store or will not return the computer and of course software people won't take the software back either for fear that I may have copied it.

of course, if it was easy I guess everyone would be doing it.


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## MysticEyes (Mar 30, 2002)

Lotsa stuff here. First you should not be dealing with blanks yet. You should be 'burning' (writing) to the hard drive. There you will then preview the output before committing to disc.

The easiest way to transfer tape is to use a standalone dvdrecorder, I have a Pioneer and the results are good. I copy the tape to a DVD-RW (in Video mode) then pop the disc into my computer for any work.

Seems you spent a ton. A friend uses higher end Pinnacle products, including the capture device and his works properly. Isn't the Dazzle a Pinnacle product? Didn't it come with software?

http://www.pinnaclesys.com/PublicSi...azzle+Video+Archiving/Dazzle+DVD+Recorder.htm

Well if you want to fool around a bit more with the 9.3G file try ConvertXtoDVD (I use it all the time). Highly recommended. It's also fast and the vid quality is quite good. A free trial is available.

http://www.vso-software.fr/products/convert_x_to_dvd/

You might also try this free converter, it's a bit daunting to use and set up but it might do the trick.

http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

From your posts it also sounds like maybe your computer has a few problems or possibly wasn't set up right.


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## thecoalman (Mar 6, 2006)

Martial33 said:


> Mystic, its "WMV"


You should not be capturing as WMV unless you're only intention is for keeping it on HD or uploading it the web for others. WMV like MPEG is a format made for viewing and distribution, not for editing. You should capture video as either a lightly compressed AVI using the Huffy Codec or in your case whatever the device is outputting. You mention you have a Dazzle, most of those converters output MPEG which is what you should be capturing as. Read on.... 



> Meanwhile it took all the time to edit these projects and only to find out that I couldn't burn them. So later I got smarter, I think, and tried to just do some burning without making a huge project just to see if that's where I was getting bottlenecked.


Excellent idea, Here's a perfect source, it's only from a cheap D-8 cam so visually it's not the greatest but the file itself is perfect. It's a NTSC DV-AVI, Can't give you step by steps but convert it to MPEG2 using Premeire at NTSC (16:9) 720x480 8000kbps bottom Field first. Import it into Encore place it on the first play section and burn it. No chapters nothing else, final result should be a smoooth playing first play video when played on TV.

You'll need broadband:
(240MB) http://www.nepadigital.com/temp/mydreamsnippet.avi



> I took out my VCR and attached it to Dazzle hardware which (analog to digital converter) plugged into USB and tried to start capturing some footage


You still haven't mentioned what Dazzle product you have and it may very well be the root of your problem at least for when you are using it for a source. As I mentioned in this thread http://forums.techguy.org/multimedia/512593-vhs-dvd.html for the most part they very troublesome for most people. If it's one of the cheaper ones then it's pretty much garbage since the cheaper ones convert to a very low quality video, add to that your converting it on the fly to something else and the end result is very bad video.

There's a few fundammental rules you have to follow to get good DVD's.

A. Capture and edit the highest quality source you can get. *Garbage in = Garbage out. *BTW, judging the quality on your computer is not a very good way. Your files may look great on your computer but this is in fact bad depending on what you are vieing them with. Made for TV video is interlaced and should look bad on your computer if played as interlaced particularly around high motion scenes.

B. If you're editing MPEG use a MPEG editor, not sure how Premeire handles MPEG's but if it reencodes the entire video if you make a few minor edits then it's not the tool for the job. Ulead and a few other products will only reencode what you have edited but you shouldn't be working with MPEG to begin with if quality is your goal.

C. Covert to MPEG once and only once, this falls in line with B. You should be doing as little as possible. Lightly compressed AVI>MPEG ... and that's it.


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## Martial33 (Nov 1, 2002)

its a Dazzle DVC 90 

-- tried the link to the rock concert video - seems that my system will not buffer enough info prior to playing it, or the play runs faster than the buffer? I can hold back the play bar let it buffer somewhat but if not, it plays choppy.

Will try to download it however and go though the steps you mentioned. See how that works out.

the reason for Dazzle was because before, I was importing raw footage, editing, outputting to Encore, only to find out that the project wouldn't burn successfully, so I thought Id be smart, by pass Adobe all together and cut straight to the burning.

thats when I ran into the problems that Videowave wouldn't record the sound and Ulead would record it but not burn it, so I used WMM to record then tried to burn with the other softwares.

[even tried importing into After Effects, then changing the output to 720 x 480 but hte result was still very choppy]

Odd that the Coalman mentions "bottom Field first" -- I found that in Premiere, this is the default however in VW7 "upper field first" is default? I dont even know what these refer to but odd that the two programs would be opposite. Maybe thats why one doesnt want to talk to the other?

MysticEyes; if you save it to the hard drive first, the file might look fine but playback on a dvd player might not be as good. Also, I belive there is something going wrong in the burning procedure.

Premiere and VW7 both have preview windows that the "test file" previewed on perfectly, yet try to burn it and its another story.

ConvertXtoDVD: I tried the watermarked-trial version - still choppy. Will give the other one a go as well and report back.

I might be jumping ahead here but is there anywhere posted step by step instructions on uploading a video to a webpage? - Not like UTube - I mean having a video play on your home page. Do you need some Flash program to do this? because both Premiere and VW7 have an output option for the final product to be used on the web.

eventually I want to be able to post a demo disk online. I think my content and creative side is worthy, just cant get it out there for everyone to see.


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## thecoalman (Mar 6, 2006)

Martial33 said:


> its a Dazzle DVC 90


Can't find much on that even on Pinnacles site, doesn't say its a hardware encode so I'd suggest using AVI with the Huffy codec. You'll probably have to use the pinnacle program to capture with it. you can then import it into Premeire.



> Will try to download it however and go though the steps you mentioned. See how that works out.


Right click and select save as then play it from your hardrive.



> Odd that the Coalman mentions "bottom Field first" -- I found that in Premiere, this is the default however in VW7 "upper field first" is default? I dont even know what these refer to but odd that the two programs would be opposite. Maybe thats why one doesnt want to talk to the other?


The field order depends on the device, DV devices like a video cam or Canopus are BFF , all others for the most part are TFF. It's in reference to the interlacing, or the lines you should be seeing on your computer where there is motion. Selecting the wrong field order won't prevent a video from importing, what it will do is give you a ghosting affect where there is a lot of movement when you go to view it on a TV... may even appear choppy.

There's more here: http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=257631


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## MysticEyes (Mar 30, 2002)

> MysticEyes; if you save it to the hard drive first, the file might look fine but playback on a dvd player might not be as good. Also, I belive there is something going wrong in the burning procedure.
> 
> Premiere and VW7 both have preview windows that the "test file" previewed on perfectly, yet try to burn it and its another story.


I always save my work to the HD, usually in a VIDEO_TS folder or as an ISO. From there I check it in Nero Showtime. The ISO can be mounted in a virtual drive, I use Nero Image drive. This is not the same as a preview pane in an app. Usually the end result will actually look a bit better on a TV when it's been burned to a DVD.


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## Martial33 (Nov 1, 2002)

Hi Again

well, I DL'ed http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html like Mystic suggested. I have no idea how it works so I set it at some familiar figures like 720x480

as far as "codecs" I dont even know what they are so I set that at "HuffYuV" (because Coalman mentioned it) and I set the "output container" to AVI. - left the audio at AC3 (default) others were mpeg 2 and 3 and wav (pcm 16 little-endian) which I have no idea what they mean by that either.

I dropped the file into it and its been encoding for about 15 min so far.

the shop has not been able to retrieve my date from my (ex) External drive. They claim to have ran several data recovery softwares on it but were not able to retrieve it.

they are offering me a new drive. I have the original footage I was working on initially however its an epic. about 8 hrs of footage which I had cut down to 3, broke into sequences, colour corrected etc. All that work will be for not if they cant recover the data not to mention other new data that was on it.

Do you know anything about RAID storage systems? some have told me that are very reliable and create their own back ups....

the encoder input says 777.291MB and the output fluctuates between "Working on it" then starts to count up again. The highest # ive seen so far is 2.1G - then it reverts back to "working on it"

video bitrates set at 1008kbps - audio = 96 _ I thought video bit rates should be like 4-6? is 1008 10.08 or 1.008?

how long does the encoder generally take to run? (2hr movie)

ok just got an error -- heres a pic.

...whats with me and errors??


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## Martial33 (Nov 1, 2002)

.....evidently, Tom Edison was asked how he could go on after so many failures - people telling him the the light bulb would never work. He said he had not failed. He only found several thousand ways which it would not work.

I ran this http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html several times. One time it did say that the conversion was complete. It said the output was only 2.something Gigs.

however when I went to look at it, check the properties etc, it still said it was 10G (2hr movie).

so I cut it down a bit and what I had left I cut in half to make a two disk program out of it.

Now it said (back to Roxio Video Wave Pro V7) that part one was 4.2G which, one would assume that the burn would take up most of the disk.

I burned out another disk. This time it took about 45 min to rip through 1hr of video. Quality was acceptable (considering it had been though a lot) HOWEVER, the AUDIO & VIDEO were WAY out of sync!!

VWP7 sees the file as one, that is, there is no video timeline and separate audio timeline, so I had no way of seeing that one finished before the other.

Now what?


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## Martial33 (Nov 1, 2002)

ok. I'm back from the front lines again....

this isn't THE solution by any stretch but its a work around in my case.

here's how it went down..

1) I captured using the Dazzle hardware into Windows Movie Maker which was able to capture both audio and video.
2) Imported that file into Ulead Video Studio 8.0
3) burned an ISO Image from that program to the hard drive. [Rendering took a long time - maybe 4 hrs?]
4) that file was saved an AVI which was acceptable to import into Adobe Premiere 2.0, while here, I did some edits, added some titles etc. and saved a file.
5) that file I imported into Adobe Encore DVD 2.0. Coming from Premiere, it was fine. Within Encore, I was able to add a nice first menu and some chapter points. 
5b) BURNED THE DISK! This went very well. the first burn went in a hour (2hr movie) - first time I realized I hadn't put in the chapter points so I added them to the next burn and it went wickedly fast - under 10 min. for the same program!? I was concerned that it hadn't worked but it did. I don't know why it was so much faster the second time.

Another mystery, is that along the way somehow, the 2 hr movie was made to fit on a 4.7Gig. disk! I'm not sure what program compressed it (properly) but I know coming out of Roxio Video Wave Pro 7.0 (not used in this process) the avi file was 9-10Gigs! In fact, the file coming out of Ulead was also too large - about 7.something Gigs. I recall because I was nearly ready to split the program into two chapters on two 4.7G disks..... Which leaves one of the Adobe Programs.

The disk however is NOT perfect. there are some spots that the video is stops (like you are watching a cheap version of "slow motion") Its hardly noticeable and because its only some old movies that I'm converting, I'm not to concerned. I suspect this could be because of the compression or because of the original capture through the Dazzle device OR simply because of the long convoluted process I used.

If my camera supported "line in" I would have recorded to mini dv, then straight to the Adobe programs eliminating lots of difficulties.

Or if the Adobe programs would have accepted the signal put out from Dazzle, that would have been perfect as well.

Adobe wont accept the WMM file so I had to use Ulead as a converter - conduit to Premiere.

thoughts suggestions?


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## CAST_ARD (Dec 20, 2006)

i know a software but it's not actually only for compression. it's for adding logos to video, but it's able to compress video by converting between different formats. you can find this tool here, and try easily- it has a free version.


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