# Good way to reduce video size without compromising quality?



## Black Panther (Sep 4, 2010)

My camcorder records videos at 1080p however a short 4 minute video is a whopping 550MB.

What would you suggest to compress or otherwise reduce the size of the file without reducing the quality?

The format is MTS.


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## W1zzard (Sep 4, 2010)

convert it to h.264


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## scaminatrix (Sep 4, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> convert it to h.264



Same here, I chuck it into CS5 and export to h.264


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## Champ (Sep 4, 2010)

Yesterday I was gonna watch a 4-5 minute vid on Albert Pujols and it was in 1080P.  That freaking thing was huge.


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## Black Panther (Sep 4, 2010)

I found this converter but when I tried to convert to h.264


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## scaminatrix (Sep 4, 2010)

use the .mp4 extension if poss.
also maybe you could select High Quality (Same Size With Source) see what that does, hopefully just compresses without downscaling.



EDIT: For a frame size of 1920 x 1080 (full high definition), choose a data rate of 7,000-8,000 Kbps
Also, Sounds like using the .mkv extension might be best.


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## Black Panther (Sep 4, 2010)

Lol something went wrong...

I converted it to mp4 encoding setting full hd, and from 551MB the thing blew up to 703MB!


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## kid41212003 (Sep 4, 2010)

Have you tried Live Windows Movie maker?


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## scaminatrix (Sep 4, 2010)

Black Panther said:


> Lol something went wrong...
> 
> I converted it to mp4 encoding setting full hd, and from 551MB the thing blew up to 703MB!



Try .mkv and/or the high quality (same size with source) setting.
Can you change the audio compression settings in the program you're using?



EDIT: You got K-Lite installed yea?


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## TIGR (Sep 4, 2010)

H.264 is the best option I know of today.

However, your .MTS video file probably is already using H.264 compression. Take a look at this. Five minutes of uncompressed 1080P would be much larger than 550MB.


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## Dent1 (Sep 4, 2010)

Black Panther,

You will have to either lower the video's bitrate or resolution.

But here is a trick, you can shave off a few hundred megs if you reduce the bitrate of the audio down to about 48KHz/16 with stereo/mono. The chances are you will not notice the change in audio quality unless its hooked up to a high end hi-fi.


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## Black Panther (Sep 4, 2010)

As a matter of fact I don't need any audio at all for this vid..


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## TIGR (Sep 4, 2010)

Just FYI, here is the ugly truth of just how big uncompressed 1080P can be.


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## W1zzard (Sep 4, 2010)

uncompressed isnt relevant for most people


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## RejZoR (Sep 4, 2010)

Most HD cameras record HD video in H.264 anyway, so compressing it again with the same codec doesn't make much sense. You'll indeed decrease the size but also the quality of the video. It's a lossy codec and it will always work this way. Only way to make files smaller is to lower their resolution or bitrate. But both also decrease quality. Best way is to adjust the source, your HD camera in this case. Quality should be better.


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## erocker (Sep 4, 2010)

BP! You have an ATi video card, use AVIVO! It works great and of all the encoders I've used the picture quality is the best.


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## W1zzard (Sep 4, 2010)

have you used a cpu based encoder and hand tuned the settings? imo no gpu accel transcode can come near that


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## Athlon2K15 (Sep 4, 2010)

the best program I have used is handbrake


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## erocker (Sep 4, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> have you used a cpu based encoder and hand tuned the settings? imo no gpu accel transcode can come near that



I'm about to give VirtualDub a try.


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## Black Panther (Sep 4, 2010)

Tbh even converting it to mp4 and getting it to 703MB from 551MB somehow it lost quality. This is my very first attempt at video editing/manipulation so apologies for being a noob. The quality lost is that frames appear to over-ride themselves.

I'll try to explain myself better: it's like while frame no 100 is supposed to be there, there'd still be a faint shadow of frame no 99 and also a shadow of frame no 101 coming forth, so the end result is a bit blurry/smudgy as if the viewer is crossing his eyes a little bit 


I opened the file with Windows Live Movie Maker (it's the first time I used it ) and cropped some of the video and it got saved in wmv - the final result wasn't as bad as mp4 though still not clear like the original MTS. And I removed like half of the video (250MB) and the final result was 128MB (instead of ~250MB) so that's not so bad.



erocker said:


> BP! You have an ATi video card, use AVIVO! It works great and of all the encoders I've used the picture quality is the best.





W1zzard said:


> have you used a cpu based encoder and hand tuned the settings? imo no gpu accel transcode can come near that



For the next 3 weeks I'm still on laptop in system specs (at summer place) so no ATI card...

With regards to both your advice erocker and W1zzard,  I have much work to do on google to get some knowledge before I try


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