How to reduce file size

m83

I'm after putting together a short home movie, 2mins55 consisting of about 20 pictures and a few .mov's both of which where captured on a Canon Ixus 70. I'm using Adobe Premiere Pro 2 but don't have much experience with this or video editing in general.
So i put the video together in 640x480 at 30 fps and saved it as an avi which came in at over 400 MB.

My question is how else can i export it without creating such a large file? Or is this normal? I've tried using the media encoder but can't find a setting that works without screwing up the quality.

Thanks!

Setun

Well I think it should be at 25fps for starters no? Unless you're in an NTSC region?

m83

Daddio wrote: »

Well I think it should be at 25fps for starters no? Unless you're in an NTSC region?

It's neither PAL or NTSC (I think), just records to an AVI at 30 fps.. this I know for sure.

Ok, I've gotten it down to 20MB as a wmv.. I'm seriusly clueless about rendering et al, I wish there was a wee course I could take.

Setun

Yeah sorry I couldn't be of more help. I usually use compressor (with Final Cut Studio on Mac) to compress for streaming, never used Premier. There's a lot you can do in your own time on the net I'm sure, don't know any good tutorials off hand though.

decob

what are you compressing it for? put online? just to have it? dvd?

what avi codecs were you using to get the 400mb file? as for is it normal for files to be huge... in a word yes. Occasionally i'd be working with uncompressed quicktimes and 30seconds of it is just over the 900meg mark.

m83

Ya I was compressing to get it online and also to email it, gmail allows up to 20mb so I should be ok.

Thanks for the help guys.

decob

well for online, look at mpeg4/ h.264 codecs.

m83

Rather than start a new thread and hijack the forum with my n00biness I decided to post here... So I made another video.

Ran into some major problems with Premiere Pro in that the Adobe Media Encoder stopped working. I almost had a fit as it was looking like I couldn't get it onto YouTube, all 720MB's because of their 100MB limit but fortunately that has been increased to 1GB now.. happy days!

So, if anyone could check out the video and critique the edit I'd be delighted as I'd love to know what I'm doing wrong and how to improve.

Video is here.. http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=gAz7x-I36Aw I made it for a mate. I haven't embedded it here as you can watch it in high quality on YouTube and I know ye would prefer that

Thanks!

joe.inom

well your stuff is really very confusing cause you see avi format takees a very little size , further with 30 fps , it shouldnt exceed 50 to 60 mb cause i havew done similar stuff with 40 fps and havong like 30 images , also in adobe premier.
Hey , did you confuse tyour self with 40.0 MB ????



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decob

joe.inom wrote: »

well your stuff is really very confusing cause you see avi format takees a very little size , further with 30 fps , it shouldnt exceed 50 to 60 mb cause i havew done similar stuff with 40 fps and havong like 30 images , also in adobe premier.
Hey , did you confuse tyour self with 40.0 MB ????

incorrect. Avi is a container format so the end file size will depend on the codec he uses.

m83

I was only able to export the video as an uncompressed avi, hence the large file size.

Kiith

I'm also going to hijack this thread with my noobiness...anyway, I have a 13 meg .wmv file that i need to make smaller, without losing much quality or size. Is .wmv a better format then .avi? I would convert it to another format (such as .rmvb) but the computers in work do not have the right codecs. So it has to be a standard media player codec. Any suggestions?

Its currently at 640x480, with a bitrate of 384. I have absolutly no experience with this kind of thing, and am only really using free software from the net.

decob

whats the running length of the clip?

To be honest - assuming that the clip is a wmv9 file, your not really gonna get it that much smaller without compromising on the quality of the clip given the current bitrate. You could try a divx or mpeg4 codec - but transcoding it to another format can introduce video artifacts.

Richard O' Shea

hey m83,

my best advice when shooting anything is turn auto-focus off! Also try shooting from various differant angles, a comomon mistake many people make is to shoot everything from shoulder height, get down on the ground or climb up on an object, mix it up a little more.

When exporting media for youtube, use a good compression codec, uploading a lossless avi to youtube must have have been very time consuming. When exporting from premiere use a mpeg4 codec or install the free xvid codec on your system, either of these would greatly reduce your file size and allow you to quickly upload to youtube.

m83

Richard O' Shea wrote: »

hey m83,

my best advice when shooting anything is turn auto-focus off! Also try shooting from various differant angles, a comomon mistake many people make is to shoot everything from shoulder height, get down on the ground or climb up on an object, mix it up a little more.

When exporting media for youtube, use a good compression codec, uploading a lossless avi to youtube must have have been very time consuming. When exporting from premiere use a mpeg4 codec or install the free xvid codec on your system, either of these would greatly reduce your file size and allow you to quickly upload to youtube.

Hey thanks for the reply! I actually didn't film it myself, just edited the clips. I also put in some of the blur effects to make the beginning of the clip a little raw before the big edit fest began

I'm after upgrading to CS3 and loving the new h.264 codecs at my disposal. However, I still have a question. If the goal of the project is to export to say, youtube then should I begin the project as a DV PAL project or as a custom project, such as 640x480, sqr pixels, 30 fps, etc? Or is it ok, quality wise if I do the resizing with Adobe Media Encoder? I ask because I'm still having trouble getting a good quality upload to Youtube and have tried a huge amount of various settings and uploading with barely noticable changes between the clips.

Cheers!

m83

anyone?