Reducing video file size

SteveD | 09:33 Fri 27th Jan 2012 | Computers

2 Answers

I am in the process of converting some old home movies on VHS video cassettes to files which can be viewed on a PC. I am using ion Video 2 PC hardware with Cyberlink Power Director 8 (supplied by ion). A 3-hour video tape ends up as an .mpg file of 10 GB or more. Could someone please suggest a way of reducing the file size without losing too much quality or ending up with an unacceptably small image on the screen? I have AVS Video Converter 7.1, my PC's operating system is Windows 7 so I also have Windows Live Movie Maker.

Thanks

Keyboard!

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AlBags

Encode to Home Theatre profile (avi/divx) 2-pass if poss. Then they will also play on many dvd players as data.
If you encode as mpg, they will be ruddy big .. as you discovered.

SteveD

Question Author

Thanks.
In the Quality Profile Setup of Power Director, the following are offered:

MPEG-1 (VCD HQ)
MPEG-2 (DVD HQ; DVD HQ (Fast); DVD SP; DVD LP; SVCD HQ; SVCD HQ (Fast))
AVI (AVI Long Play Profile; AVI High Speed Profile; AVI High Quality Profile)

I have been using MPEG-2 DVD HQ (which is what Power Director defaulted to). Which of the AVI settings would you recommend trying?

In Capture Preferences it is possible to set a size limit but I have no idea of what that should be. I have not been able to find a tutorial for Cyberlink Power Director.

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