Need help compressing video file for uploading

randell6564 · 08-28-2007, 08:42 PM

Hey folks!
I have some music videos that I want to upload to my online storage, but they are all 25 to 45MB in size and that would take much too long with my connection speed!

Can someone please tell me how and what to use to make these files smaller?

I am dual-booting Ubuntu 7.04 and Windows XP, so anything that would work on either will be appreciated!

Thanks!

binary_y2k2 · 08-28-2007, 11:29 PM

Gzip or Bzip2 are probably the best compression formats.
You can use a GUI like File Roller or Ark...
Gzip has less compression but it's quicker and less memory intensive, Bzip2 has higher compression but more memory usage..

Code:

gzip --best filename.video

then that will compress as "filename.video.gz"

Code:

bzip2 --best filename.video

then that will compress as "filename.video.bz2"

Wim Sturkenboom · 08-29-2007, 02:51 PM

You can not really compress videos as they are usually already compressed using a lossy compression. What is the current format (mpeg2)? I can't advise but maybe someone can advise based on the answer.

randell6564 · 08-29-2007, 08:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wim Sturkenboom

You can not really compress videos as they are usually already compressed using a lossy compression. What is the current format (mpeg2)? I can't advise but maybe someone can advise based on the answer.

Thanks Guy's!
In answer to your question, Wim Sturkenboom, 'MPEG 1' is what the properties of these video's are telling me. Don't know if that helps. I'm not a video person.

I tried right clicking on the files and selecting "Create Archive". You get the choice of creating a tar.gz, tar.bz2, .tar, .zip, .gz, .bz2, .ar, .ear, .jar, or .war. None of these choices get me even CLOSE! (only reduces the file by a couple MB's)

I just want to upload them to my online file storage for safe keeping. 40MB takes much too long to upload when I'm trying to get about 15 files uploaded.

Thanks!

randell6564 · 08-29-2007, 09:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by binary_y2k2

Gzip or Bzip2 are probably the best compression formats.
You can use a GUI like File Roller or Ark...
Gzip has less compression but it's quicker and less memory intensive, Bzip2 has higher compression but more memory usage..

Code:

gzip --best filename.video

then that will compress as "filename.video.gz"

Code:

bzip2 --best filename.video

then that will compress as "filename.video.bz2"

Hi binary_y2k2!
I did a

Code:

gzip --best videoname.mpg

and that only reduced the size by 2MB.
Isn't there software out there that can do some serious compression?

Wim Sturkenboom · 08-30-2007, 02:04 AM

As I said, video compresses badly as it's already compressed. I'm not a video person either, but I know that the latest mpeg compression is mpeg-4 which compresses far better; I however don't know how wide-spread it currently is and if software tools are available for it (encoding as well as decoding).

As I see it, either encoding using a better compression (preferred; e.g. mpeg-4) or re-encoding to a better compression is the only solution for you.

theYinYeti · 08-30-2007, 02:39 AM

You could try something like this.

Suppose the average length of your videos is 5 minutes (it is a rough guess based on the info you gave), that is 300 seconds. Let's say you want each video to be about 10MiB in size (change according to your needs), that is 10000KiB. That would give you a need for (10000/300)*8 kb/s, hence 266kb/s.
For the sound, we'll suppose 64kb/s (we won't actually process it, as it would lead to useless quality loss), which leaves 202kb/s for the video.
That's very approximative calculation, but you get the idea.

So you'd run the following command:

Code:

mencoder -mc 0 yourfile.mpeg1 -vf pp=ha/va/dr,hqdn3d,harddup
 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:autoaspect:vbitrate=202:dia=3:cmp=3:subcmp=3:last_pred=2:trell:mbd=2:v4mv
 -oac copy
 -ofps 25 -o newfile.avi

That's a single line, split here for better readability. On the "last line", change 25 with the actual frames per seconds you have (25 is for PAL or SECAM, I don't know if it is 30 or 29.xxx with NTSC); if you have a doubt, just remove the "-ofps 25" entirely.

Yves.