Compressing Videos?

[cluelessgenius]

so i converted some old VHS tapes from my parents basement into digital.

 

so far so good but i feel like the software used some bad format or something.

 

the files are up to 8gb big.

 

when it comes to video editing i have no clue waht so ever.

 

can someone tell me the best way to get the files smaller. i feel like it should be possible to have them way smaller without quality loss. especially since they were PAL videos so only 768 x 576.

[Ratisbona]

Ok to bring this back to topic:
One of the most commonly used tools for this is "HandBrake". You'll find lots of tutorials for this on Youtube. It's got a lot of options to play around with, this should fit your needs.

[cluelessgenius]

7 minutes ago, Ratisbona said:

Ok to bring this back to topic:
One of the most commonly used tools for this is "HandBrake". You'll find lots of tutorials for this on Youtube. It's got a lot of options to play around with, this should fit your needs.

thanks man. looks like its just what i needed. ill try it when i get home later. can i so simple cutting with it or should i do that with something else? and before converting or after or doesnt matter? basically there like an hour of some vacation and then there some birthday party and then theres whatever but right now since it was all on the same tape its the same file i just need to split the video into multiple videos by topic

[cluelessgenius]

1 minute ago, VegetableStu said:

as mentioned, use handbrake. get the bitrate down to 8mbps (about 8000kbps)

... actually I'll defer to @Dan Castellaneta on the exact settings. i can't find his post for the exact setting for the best results

ahh yes thank you that was another thing i was struggling with all the setting from video and audio bitrate , sample rate and then of course what format to convert to ideally. i though mp4 just because most videos i see nowadays are. but thats just the container as i understand it so in there im at a loss again. .h264? and then mp3 or ACC for the audio ? im really over whelmned by the amount possibilities that i know nothing about to even start comparing and making a decision

[cluelessgenius]

*snip*

[cluelessgenius]

6 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

? Handbrake's open source o_o

woops forget what i said im juggling 2 topics here and mistyped

[cluelessgenius]

ok so im trying but somehow i end up with even bigger videos. i really need some help with what settings to use

[mariushm]

MP4 , AVI, MKV are video containers ... they contain video tracks, audio tracks, subtitles.

 

Inside these containers, video and audio is stored in a compressed form, using various CODECs (methods of compression)

 

The most common compression codec for MP4 and MKV is H264. The most popular encoder for h264 is the free software x264 

Before H264, we used to have H263, with the most popular encoder program being XVID and we also have MPEG-2 which is used in DVDs.

 

For audio, the most common codecs are MP3, AAC, AC3 for lossy formats and FLAC for lossless audio. There's also Opus which is a newer audio codec which is great for audio quality, but some TVs or portable players may not be smart enough to decode it, so it's probably best to stick with AAC or MP3, which are both very well supported by devices.

 

Handbrake can use x264 to encode video and other programs to encode the audio to MP3 or AAC, using the quality settings you choose. 

Your video files are big (8 GB) because the capture program probably is configured for  "very fast and high-ish quality, don't think too much, use up to 2-3 MB per second of video" because the capture program has to use a profile which would work on a wide range of computers out there, some with slower processors, some with more powerful processors. 

You can configure Handbrake to use a preset that's more like "high quality, think a lot and retain as much quality as you can within some amount of disk space for each second of video"  because you're not constrained now by having to keep up with the real time speed of a tape.

The video encoder can think a lot to squeeze as much quality in a smaller amount of disk space and maybe work at 2-3 times slower than real time speed.

 

Besides Handbrake, a software that may be easier to work with is MeGUI : https://sourceforge.net/projects/megui/

 

Look into Handbrake's option or MeGUI and choose your quality preset.

Go with CRF 16..18 and  "slower" or "veryslow" preset and for a video tape, that should get you around 1-2 MB per second... so a one hour video will end up to around 4-5 GB 

To squeeze into less disk space, use a higher value CRF ... think of this CRF as saving each frame, each picture of your video, to JPG and the CRF value is your quality level so CRF 16 is like saving each picture as JPG 90% quality.  This way, the quality of the video is consistent over the length of the video, but you can't estimate the final size of your video - one minute with less motion may use only 10 MB of disk space, a minute with more motion may use 30 MB of disk space.