Smaller Video Format: Avi Or Mpg?

[Doi Thong]

What is smaller video compessed format AVI or MPG?

And one more question: have someone seen "Muvee Autoproducer 3.5 Magic Moments" selling in Pantip or somewhere else? Thanks for advice.

[Firefoxx]

One thing you need to know: AVI simply refers to "audio video interleaved". There is no single AVI format. It's the extension given to a variety of different videos using a variety of different codecs. Sometimes AVIs are also given MPG extenstions, but usually an MPG extension means that it's using either the mpeg1(vcd) or mpeg2(dvd) codec.

Divx (or mpeg4 or xvid) is a pretty popular avi codec now because it gives pretty good quality with low bitrates (ie. small file size), but you need the codec installed to view it. Mpeg1 is universal and can be viewed pretty much anywhere, while mpeg2 gives dvd-quality. You have to remember that nearly all the codecs allow you to adjust lots of variables while encoding a video file, such as quality, bitrate, spoilage, etc. etc. and so you can get reall small files sizes or really good quality (you can't get both) with pretty much all codecs.

There is also the issue of audio codecs, which are separate from video codecs.

It also boils down to your intentions. Do you want good quality yet small files? Do you want compatibility? Do you want to be able to play on slower computers? How big do you want the screen size to be?

To give you an example of why your question "which is smaller" can't be answered:

1 hour of DV codec AVI will take about 12gigabytes

1 hour of good quality DIVX will take about 600megabytes

1 hour of MPEG will take about 600 megabytes (lower resolution than DIVX)

1 hour of MPEG2 will take about 4 gigabytes

Codecs are pretty complicated.

[kabal1234]

I'd say you can get the best compression ratio with xvid (avi) at the expense of using more of your cpu, I think...

[Doi Thong]

The file is 7.3 MG of 21 second, I would like to compress it to let say 2 MG, any suggestions/software? The full info bellow:

File Size: 7.39445304870605 Mb

Uncompressed Size: 118.19091796875 Mb

Compression Ratio: 0.0625636315868294%

Reported Data Rate: 356 Kb/s

Video Format: MPEG-1

Width x Height: 320 x 240

Frame Rate: 25 fps

Length in Frames: 532

Duration: 00:00:21

Color Depth: 24 Bits

Uncompressed Size: 116.89453125 Mb

Audio Format: MPEG-1, Layer-II

Sample Rate: 32000

Length in Sample: 679680

Channels: Stereo

Bits per Channel: 16 Bits

Duration: 00:00:21

Uncompressed Size: 1.29638671875 Mb

[kabal1234]

Also depends how you wanna watch it. On a VCD player you need mpeg1, dvd player mpeg2, if you just wanna see it on your puter, go for xvid.

Some great s/w is TMPGEnc and VirtualDub... AviSynth is also great for filters/editing.

[kabal1234]

A great site to answer most question:

http://www.doom9.org

[katyb]

I recently used the free trial download of Cucusoft MPEG/AVI to VCD/DVD/SVCD/MPEG converter Lite 4.56 from http://www.avi-vcd.com/ to convert a 6.5mb AVI to 2.9 MPEG which runs OK on the web.

Some other products available there too which might help.

KB

[sas_cars]

If u care for good quality and small size,You can opt for wmv format.WIndows Media Video.Very good quality with very small size.Better than Divx avi mp4 conversions

[bkk_mike]

If you go for DivX - you can actually get DVD players that will play DVD-Rs with Divx files on them. (Xvid might work too - after all, they're both MPEG4 codecs).

As a general rule, a DVD movie will compress to somewhere between 700Mb to 1Gb at very good quality.

[Doi Thong]

Wmv is a great format, you're right sas_cars, I converted MPG file of 9MG to wmv 3MG wthout loosing much quality. Unfortunatelly most of video editing progs are pretty buggy, especially joiners...I cant replace sound layot on my MPG file with music track.

[kabal1234]

I believe it's very hard to edit vids in formats like wmv or divx because of the limited number of key frames. My vids are capured in huffy or MJPEG and edited in AviSynth or VirtualDub whilst encoding to the target format.

[stumonster]

have a look at auto gordian knot (AGK)to make divX or xvid files. you will also need virtuadub as well.

[sas_cars]

Doi Thong,What encoder you are using to convert to WMV.I must suggest Windows Media Encoder 9.You can download it from Microsoft site for free.

[Doi Thong]

I'm done with my movies, so now little about software I found useful:

The original movie was taken by Sony DCS-F77 digital cam, straight to MPG format. I cut it to few smaller pieces with "Easy Video Splitter".Now, after trying many other progs and joiners that was bagged or trial versions(and I couldnt crack it), I found Sony Movie Shaker 3.3 that come complimantary with my Vaio. What an amazing piece of software ! Cut/join/capture video, cut or add audio, texts, effects and more. Very stable and easy to use. After editing my videos, I finnaly covert it to Wmv format with Boilsoft Asf Converter. Another amazing program: mpg file of about 7-8 mg with stereo wav layot on it, could be easy converted to 1-2.5 mg in wmv using NTSC 768 kbps option. Mission completed..:-)