I've been working on a short video (6 minutes) for a relative and I can't seem to get it below 114 MB. Nothing in here seems to be really huge, three .wmv clips, about 6 .jpg files, none larger than 126 KB. There are about 4 titles but nothing really extreme.

I rendered with Vegas 6.0c at 640X480 as WMV 9. With quality at "Good" and audio at a lower setting as it wasn't the best anyway (Birthday party stuff). So I was surprised to see it so large. I was expecting something around 55 MB at most.

Where did I go wrong?

__________________
If freedom means anything at all, it is the liberty to tell others what they don't want to hear.

The best output format will depend how you are going to show the video.

Personally, I render everything to DV .avi and keep that as my 'master', I then, if needed, make a compressed copy for the web using 700kbit / sec wmv and / or import the .avi into dvd architect for making dvds.

A 6min avi should be around 1.3gig with the wmv (at the bit rate above) being about 23meg.

It looks like you just need to tweek the wmv settings a bit.

The settings commonly used give an acceptable quality and a file size / bit rate small enough for web use / pen drive:-

Set quality to best, makes no difference to file size.

Aduio - default settings.

Video: Mode - bit rate vbr
foramt wmv 9
Image size - keep original size
Frame rate - (set to same as project)
secs per key frame - 3
average bit rate - 700k

Others may use different settings but that works for me.

I suggest keeping a high quality dv avi version on your computer to show people as this will look much better, and use the wmv version for the web / small portable media.

Thanks for the reply, Mark. I'll try your settings. This was a project for a relative and he was hoping to be able to e-mail it to others, but I don't see that happening. I was able to send him a 99 MB version via Yahoo Messenger. I told him to burn it to a DVD for the birthday "boy" (he was 50) and Up load it to someplace like openupload.com where people could view and d/l if they choose. This really seems like the best solution.

Thanks again for the tips. I copied them to a Word doc so I can apply them when I like.

__________________
If freedom means anything at all, it is the liberty to tell others what they don't want to hear.

If you are going to regularly share large files the best soloution for many is to buy some server space. It really is quite cheap oin the uk, and I presume everywhere.

Saves a lot of irritation with restrictions on these file sharing services. It is difficult to make vids of any length small enough for e mail with 8meg being a typical size restriction.

You might also considor putting the file on a cd / dvd and posting it.

I don't expect to be sharing large files often enough for it to be a problem. In any case. I can put them up on the Google site (http://video.google.com/ ) that doesn't seem to have any file restrictions and mark them available for downloading. I've already uploaded a 435MB video and an 885MB one is loading now. I can email the specific URL to only the people who want it and they can look at it and download it or not as they please.

Of course, renting some server space could put me into the entire website thing and really eat up all my time. LOL Well, I don't really work, so I might do it anyway. Thanks again for the replies.

__________________
If freedom means anything at all, it is the liberty to tell others what they don't want to hear.

I fairly new to this editing business and i kept rendering my videos to avi files and i was like damn how am i supposed to burn a bunch of these things on a dvd? Yeah im a total noob but now i know to render them to .wmv if i want to share them over the web. LOL Thanks for the help this is a great forum to learn from!