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| Thread ID: 123674 | 2012-03-10 08:52:00 | Movie Video Formats and Compression? | Winston001 (3612) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1264110 | 2012-03-10 08:52:00 | I think technology has got away from me. My teenage son was given some movies on a thumb drive. All I know is DVD and only in a vague way. Presumably each movie started off as a compressed DVD file of 6-8 GB but when I took a look, some were only 1 GB in size but nevertheless appeared to be good quality. They were in MP4 format which I thought was Apple...but who knows. :illogical So I thought it was time I learned a bit more except the whole subject of video formats and compression seems to be more than this brain can comprehend. Then there are containers. Whatever happened to simple AVI?? I do not download movies but assumed those who did accepted huge files each time. However if a watchable movie can be compressed to 800 MB or so, how does that work? What is the best format (if that is even the right term) for a movie these days? |
Winston001 (3612) | ||
| 1264111 | 2012-03-10 09:51:00 | AVI is old school these days. There are better file compression formats about that can take a standard DVD and reduce it with very little lose in quality, some of them unless you have them playing side by side you would never know the difference. Lets say you had made a family movie of Xmas, a party, grand kids etc, in the past it may have taken a full DVD, or Dual layer DVD, but with file compression you can easily shirk it to something a lot smaller. Handbrake is such a program used to compress, it used to have the option of AVI, but thats gone now. By default it will only offer two versions, MP4 & MKV. MP4 is not confined to Apple - many players like VLC or media Player classic will quite happily play it. I do not download movies but assumed those who did accepted huge files each time No not really, this is what/ why the movie industry is going nuts over, pirated movies. The Basic's in a nut shell: At some stage, someone will have had the original DVD, compressed it to a more downloadable size, 700MB - 1.5GB and uploaded to a file sharing site(s), then over a period of time when others download and share the movie it gets spread around and so it goes on. While the quality may not be as good as the original DVD, some have managed to get very good results.And because its digital it doesn't degrade with every download. So instead of the movie industry selling lets say 1 million copies of a DVD at $30, people are downloading 1 million copies at ever so slightly less quality for nothing, and the movie industry gets nothing -- they claim lose sales--- and then the fight begins lol. |
wainuitech (129) | ||
| 1264112 | 2012-03-10 10:09:00 | Thankyou Wainui, I really appreciate the explanation. I have a video of my (same) son doing parkour (free running) with his friends and it is almost 1 GB in size. I'd love to compress it and share it with family. Actually there is a version of it on the net but not clear enough to show his grandmother. vimeo.com What I have is MP4. What do you suggest I use to compress it? |
Winston001 (3612) | ||
| 1264113 | 2012-03-10 10:16:00 | Try Handbrake (http://handbrake.fr/) Its free and does a good job. You can select the size you want in the settings 3648 Play around with the size, lets say you type in 500 in the Target MB sizing, compress it, see what it looks like. you can then fiddle about till you get it to something you think is acceptable. Actually there is a version of it on the net but not clear enough to show his grandmother. vimeo.com If its the one that plays for 3.20, thats very clear -- talented bunch, I'd be flat on me arse if I tried any of that lol |
wainuitech (129) | ||
| 1264114 | 2012-03-10 11:15:00 | Aw mate its easy. A few years ago..ok, a few decades ago and I'd have been in there. He must get it from somewhere...:thumbs: The video was jerky when I looked at it - maybe my neighbours are busy downloading...:D |
Winston001 (3612) | ||
| 1264115 | 2012-03-11 01:38:00 | Oh, and just to clarify things, AVI, MP4, MKV (& many others) are all container formats. It's quite easy to confuse Windows Media Player with an AVI if you use the right (i.e. wrong) video and/or audio codecs. So AVI is not that simple, after all. Even the old WAV audio format is a container able to support MP3 & others internally. | MushHead (10626) | ||
| 1264116 | 2012-03-18 03:38:00 | Oh, and just to clarify things, AVI, MP4, MKV (& many others) are all container formats. It's quite easy to confuse Windows Media Player with an AVI if you use the right (i.e. wrong) video and/or audio codecs. So AVI is not that simple, after all. Even the old WAV audio format is a container able to support MP3 & others internally. Thanks Mush....I think. :( I don't really understand containers and codecs but maybe it isn't necessary to understand them? Normally I use WMP but if there is a problem VLC Media Player is very good. |
Winston001 (3612) | ||
| 1264117 | 2012-03-18 04:13:00 | Now, I'm no expert, but the following is what I have gathered... MP4, MKV, AVI are all what's known as Containers. They contain 1 or more combinations of audio, video, even subtitle tracks. They also include information about the lengthen of the audio/video, it's bitrate, and some containers include extras such as chapter information etc. H.264, MPEG-4, divx/xvid, AAC etc are known as codecs. They are various different ways of compressing audio and video to make it smaller. A typical downloaded movie may be a MP4 container, with a MPEG-4 Video track, with an AAC audio track. Or it may be an MKV container, with a H.264 video track, a Dolby Digital Audio track, an AAC audio track, Chapters and subtitles. Or it could be an old school AVI container, with a divx/xvid video track and MP3 audio track. Most containers will support multiple different types of codecs. For example, MP4 and MKV both support MPEG-4 and H.264 codecs. Confused yet? |
Sherman (9181) | ||
| 1264118 | 2012-03-18 06:50:00 | There is also VidCoder (http://vidcoder.codeplex.com/) that uses Handbrake's transcoder. | kahawai chaser (3545) | ||
| 1264119 | 2012-03-18 08:17:00 | Thanks Kahawai, does VidCoder make the process easier? I'm a newbie at this compression and encoding stuff. DVD Shrink was good enough in the past but guess we all have to move with the times. | Winston001 (3612) | ||
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