AVI on NTFS Compressed HD
 

I will be transferring movie film for a customer who wants me to provide the resulting avi files on an external HD so he can do his own editing.

Fitting the files on the HD is going to be tight, between 4 and 4.5 hours on a 40 GB disc, but the customer says he'll supply the HD with compression enabled. (NTFS compressed).

Does avi lend itself to compression? If so, how much compression could I expect.

Using winRAR to compress some AVI (DV codec, 48khz uncompressed audio), I'm seeing that the compressed file is 88.3% the size of the original. DV already is 5:1 compression, and the audio is uncompressed (you can get 3:1 lossless compression at best).

I didn't try Windows compressed folders.

4/4.5hours of footage is not going to fit on a 40GB hard drive that way. You also have to take into account the hard drive numbering system- the 40GB drive has less than 40GB when formatted and when counting in mega/mebibytes (one of them).

I'd get a bigger firewire drive. Go on newegg.com to find the street price for one, and quote the client for that price + markup or ask client to provide a bigger hard drive.

You could compress the video further than DV (5:1) + something like winRAR but you waste a lot of computer time compressing it, which I assume you'd bill your client for. Might as well use a firewire drive.

Thanks Glenn,

I was afraid that I would not see much compression. Depending on how much over I go on fitting to the HD, I may either burn excess avi data files to DVD-R or suggest the purchase of an additional drive.

I appreciate your answer.

The NTFS compression will not do much if anything. RAR is one of
the better compression algorithms (better than NTFS for sure) and
that doesn't even give you enough. A larger harddisk would be
a far better deal.

4.5 hours is around 57 GB.

Thanks to all for the answers. With disc storage being so cheap, I never implement compression, so had no idea what to expect.

Pricewatch.com lists external 80GB hard drives starting at $70, and internal ones starting at $44. Tell the guy to spend a few bucks if he wants you to do the project, since what he's asking for now doesn't make any sense. If someone offered you money to pour six quarts of water into a gallon jug, would you take the job?