Help me compress my 4gig move to 2gig

capitalP

capitalP

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Hey all, My movie which is clocking in at 1h:45m comes to a nice size of 4gig at the moment. I'm still using Vegas 6. The movie was rendered for DVD authoring in DVD Architect, but I also need a smaller file version to submit to a festival online. The limit of the file size is 2gig. I'm assuming the festival I submit to will view the film at full frame on their computer screen. So I know it will be tough to get the movie to it's full frame 720x480 and still keep it at 2gig, is there any tip to compress it at the full frame and still keep a decent quality and under 2gig? thanks for any advice.
 
The size of the movie is directly proportional to the bit rate. Regardless of frame size or quality. So take the bit rate you compressed your DVD with, and cut it in half. That is what you have to work with.

After that, selecting a codec that can generate a nice result at the dictated bitrate is something else entirely.

Honestly, a 2hr movie compressed in Mpeg4 or WMV at 2Mbps should look VERY nice and easily fit inside 2GB.
 
Yeah that's how I was able to get it to the 4gig to fit in DVD Architect, I played around with the Bit Rate a little, but I did notice quality lost, not much but some. So if I bring the bit rate down even lower to fit 2GB then quality will be lost. If watched in a frame of 320x240 then it will look great, but watching it blown up in a big monitor to T.V is what worries me.

I will experiment with different bit rate and see, the problem is the deadline for the festival is in a few days so I don't really have time to do different trial and error as Rendering takes so much time.

The good news is, I'll be rendering the already rendered 4GB file. Because it took like 2 days to render the original timeline because of Magic Bullet, thanks for the input.
 
When you are compressing for DVD you are using Mpeg2. Both Mpeg4 and WMV are superior technologies and will look quite good at 2Mbps if you are talking about SD (not HD) video.

Instead of trial and error with the project, just compress 10 seconds at different rates until you arrive at something you like. Then compress the entire project.
 
Yeah it's SD, I'm playing right now with a few settings, I am trying rending some 5 seconds clip to see, but I really won't get the final size unless the whole things renders out, my math is horrible to try and figure out the size/seconds from the 5 second clip sizes to the full movie size lol
 
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