Hatrack River Forum: Video editing question--help the novice

This is topic Video editing question--help the novice in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :

I come now to Hatrack, the font of all knowledge trivial and technical. [Smile]

I need to add several video clips (each 2-3 minutes in length) to a project, and I need their file sizes to be as small as I can make them (I understand it will not be SMALL, per se...but as small as I can get them would be good).

What's the best format for this?

Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :

What kind of project is it? I mean, what exactly are you putting these clips into? Powerpoint? A CD? What?

Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :

I'm learning to use Director, and the ultimate goal for the clips is for them to be part of a project in Director. It doesn't have to be particularly professional, just small enough to be able to store all clips on the same portable media (CD, if it must be; jump drive if I can get them small enough).

I've made DVDs before taking clips from a VHS tape (using iMovie--hooray for video-editing for dummies!). Now, however, I'm using clips ripped off a DVD. The program I'm using will store them in a wide variety of formats. I started out turning them into .avi files, but the files are really huge. I don't know much at all about digital video, and was trying to find out what the most compressed format would be.

Posted by mackillian (Member # 586) on :

Hmm. I'm not sure. How huge is huge to you?

Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :

Well, I'm going to have four clips, and right now, they're running 250-300 MB apiece.

Posted by TMedina (Member # 6649) on :

Mental note - I think Megan is trying to squeeze them onto one CD.

What else are you planning on storing on the CD besides the video clips? Approximately what size of "other" material?

-Trevor

Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :

Yes, the director file itself, which will be .5-1 MB .

Posted by Mindbowels (Member # 7407) on :

Your best bet may be MPEG-4... I'm not sure if Quicktime Pro comes with that standard or not. If not, try the options in quicktime pro, there is a plethora of different codecs available, one of them should suit your needs!

Posted by HesterGray (Member # 7384) on :

Quicktime movies in Director worked well for me. I can't remember how many I tried to fit on one project, probably less than four. But you can always decrease the size and quality of the clip for a smaller file.

Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :

Yeah, my next idea was to take one of the clips and convert it to several different formats and see which one ended up being the smallest. I was hoping hatrack would help me avoid that, though. [Big Grin]

I did try converting one of the avi files to .mov earlier today...it trimmed 3 MB. eh.

Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :

Go with MPEG.

Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :

Not only does quicktime come with MPEG-4 support, its apple's preferred new format (and quicktime has one of the best codecs for it).

Posted by Jonathan Howard (Member # 6934) on :

AVI... Because that's my uncle's name and because the format's smaller.

Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :

AVI's not exactly a format, its more of a wrapper for other formats.

And no, AVIs are not smaller than MPEG-4s, on the whole.