Encoding uncompressed AVI and preserving quality

[jaffy1229]

Hi,

I have an uncompressed AVI movie that is around 2GB in size. What I want to do is compress the file but not compress it so much that I loose any of the original quality.

For example, I used WinRar and it compressed the file to just over 700Mb which is what I want a video encoder to do. My problem is, how I get this level of compression with the various settings involved with video encoding (I don't understand half of them!)

I can't seem to work out how much compression is too much, where I start to loose the original quality. With WinRar I do not have this problem as I know it will simply compress it as much as possible, but preserving the original quality.

Can anyone give me any advice how to achieve this, and with which encoding settings?

Cheers
Jaffy

[admin]

You can try one of the many lossless codecs - these compress the video, but you do not lose quality with it:

http://www.digital-digest.com/search_action.php?type=software&keywords=lossless+codec

[paglamon]

I don't think lossless video codecs will be able to achieve the amount of compression( 2GB to 700 MB) that jaffy desires.
BTW, jaffy, what is the source of your uncompressed avi ? I seriously doubt that your video is uncompressed avi. Uncompressed avi will be nearly 2GB per minute. Is your video only a min. long ?

[paglamon]

jobspk,

As I had asked jaffy, what is the source of your "uncompressed" avi ? How do you know it is uncompressed ?

[admin]

Sorry, I didn't read the post properly. It will be very hard to get 2 GB -> 700 MB compression without using some kind of lossy codec.

[gonwk]

Sorry, I didn't read the post properly. It will be very hard to get 2 GB -> 700 MB compression without using some kind of lossy codec.

Hi Admin,

Can you give your link for these "Lossy Codecs"!

Thanks,

G!

[admin]

Pretty much all codecs are lossy codecs, unless they are labeled as "lossless". DivX, XviD, H.264 ...

[jaffy1229]

I don't think lossless video codecs will be able to achieve the amount of compression( 2GB to 700 MB) that jaffy desires.
BTW, jaffy, what is the source of your uncompressed avi ? I seriously doubt that your video is uncompressed avi. Uncompressed avi will be nearly 2GB per minute. Is your video only a min. long ?

The source is originally a MOV file from a Kodak Zi6 video recorder, I then coverted it to AVI with Quicktime with no compression. It is only 36 seconds long.

[paglamon]

Is the AVI file better than the original MOV file ?

[jaffy1229]

Is the AVI file better than the original MOV file ?

I am not sure, but I assume it is the same quality as when Quicktime converted it to AVI, it had no compression

[paglamon]

Why did you have to convert it to AVI ?

Since Kodak Zi6 uses H264 codec, you are getting from the camera a video which is already compressed with a lossy codec. So, some amount of original data is already lost. Saving as uncompressed AVI can thus only preserve the data you have(but increasing the size many fold).The AVI can never be better than the original MOV.

[jaffy1229]

Why did you have to convert it to AVI ?

Since Kodak Zi6 uses H264 codec, you are getting from the camera a video which is already compressed with a lossy codec. So, some amount of original data is already lost. Saving as uncompressed AVI can thus only preserve the data you have(but increasing the size many fold).The AVI can never be better than the original MOV.

I cannot use the MOV file format in virtual dub, which is why I need it in AVI format.

This is why I am converting it, but not using any compression because I don't want to loose any of the quality from the original file.

[paglamon]

I think you can open MOV file in Virtualdub via AVISynth script and a directshow filter(like QT alternative).
Anyway, AVIDemux can open MOV file(H264 encoded) straightaway.

[paglamon]

And now there is a plugin to import mov files into Virtualdub.See here:http://www.videohelp.com/tools/Virtualdub