I have some scenes that I have ripped from dvds. From these scenes I want only specific parts. I have used the razor tool to cut out the parts that I dont want from each scene. My problem is that the file sizes are massive now that I have A) edited the scenes and B) exported the avi out of premiere.

What was 30MB or 50 MB after being ripped from the dvd is now anything between 300-500MBs. I would have thought that the files would now be much smaller now that they have been cut up and are a lot shorter. Does anyone know why this is happening?

Are the AVIs uncompressed completely or are they using a codec?

If you use the DV AVI codec I believe the files will be quite large - it works out something like 1 minute is anywhere up to 100 meg

Someone correct me if this is wrong as I'm going off the top of my head here.

Check your codec and try and use the Cinepak codec for AVI if you can.

If you have then I'm at a loss too.

Oh I see now what ive been doing wrong. You were right I was using DV playback instead of making it a file for windows. I didnt know you had to choose a codec all over again (after ripping from dvd).

Anyway, I can pick cinepak or xvid etc.. but I cant pick divx. Premiere doesnt have divx listed, odd saying its the most popular and all.

When I use cinepak it seems like its going to take a long time to do its thing and when I try to use xvid it crashes. Why cant I use divx?

Just a wild stab in the dark, but perhaps you have the encoder set as multipass, but don't have information in a log file from the first pass. That will cause an error.

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OK I ive cracked it now. If I use Indeo video 5.10 it has no loss of quality that I can see, and it makes my test file go from 40MB to 20.3MB. I think thats my problem sorted now, so thanks for the help guys

Glad we can be of help. I think I'll give the Indeo a go myself.

It's a pretty damn awful codec to be honest. If you're looking for small file sizes at low bitrates, i.e good quality, low file sizes you really need to stick with MPEG4 codecs such as Xvid, WMV, DivX.

I would suggest you export from Adobe Premiere as DV AVI. then use an external encoding application to encode. I personally use TMPGenc Xpress.

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OK thanks I'll try that out. I really wanted to use divx all the time if I could anyway. It seems to be the only codec that doesnt give me problems.