i want to compress a 72mb dv mpeg film down to a small size (say between 5-10mb) in order for it to be put on a website and easily downloaded.

the film has text tiles in it.

i have tried one free compressor of the web and it only reduced it to approx 50mb and the text tiles were pretty unreadable.

any advice as to what would be the best thing to do / buy

ps trying to do it on the cheap as well just top make matters worse

thanks a lot

How long is the movie, what compressor did you use?

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the film is 12 1/2 mins long

i downloaded and tried TMPGEnc-2524.63.181-free compressor

thanks

If you can, keep the screen size of the video large. Reduce the frame rate to shrink the file size instead. Then aim for a bit rate of about 400k to 800k bps with an MP4 compressor, like Microsoft's WMV9 or the free XviD codec. VirtualDub, free, will manage the compresion process well.

Online users tolerate the lower frame rates, it's been the norm for years.

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Fav quote - "Experience is whatcha don't get 'till ya don't need it no more."

System - Athlon 1.4GHz, Win98, Hauppauge PVR250 receiver and compressor.
Software -Magix Movie Edit Pro 10, Nero 6 + NeroVision Express, Moho 4.61, PSP 8.1, Bryce, Quicktime 6.52 pro, Goldwave 5, DVD-Lab.
Cameras - Panasonic GS9, Canon ES8400V, Canon EOS D20 and Canon A70

will do

thanks a lot for that, much appreciated

If you reduce the frame rate, but keep the bitrate constant, the filesize will be the same, n'est pas? By definition it's "amount of data processed per second". So the file size will be the same, but the amount of frame changes will be less, meaning the quality per frame could arguably be better. It also take less processing power...

But the file size, won't change... (at least that's the theory - know for a fact that changing the frame dimensions does not change the file size).

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Yup.. the file size is set by bit rate and play duration. Skipping frames and keeping the screen size large should result in the text remaining legible for the same file size. I find two-pass compression works pretty well. Nero's Recode produces some awesome MP4 files.

My experience so far is that a 1Mbps total, video and audio, rate produces DVD quality on a TV screen. On a PC the only difference is the screen size is slightly smaller, 576 x 320, which is a fair trade-off. Most TV sets only have a screen resolution of 400x300 pixels due to bandwidth limits in the chroma and luminance signals and intentionally defocused electron beams. (People complain when they can see the individual horizontal lines and there's aliasing from horizontal lines in the source, so set makers limit how well focused the beams are. I suspect some of the limit is in the actual TV tube itself.)

__________________
Fav quote - "Experience is whatcha don't get 'till ya don't need it no more."

System - Athlon 1.4GHz, Win98, Hauppauge PVR250 receiver and compressor.
Software -Magix Movie Edit Pro 10, Nero 6 + NeroVision Express, Moho 4.61, PSP 8.1, Bryce, Quicktime 6.52 pro, Goldwave 5, DVD-Lab.
Cameras - Panasonic GS9, Canon ES8400V, Canon EOS D20 and Canon A70