size versus quality...?

[Mikel Low]

All -

Please let me offer my thanks in advance - thank you.

The question(s);

After shooting with my Panansonic AG DVX-100 and transferring the data to my PC and editting it down to what I want ... how do I create a smaller quicktime or mpeg or avi?

I don't have a lot of money and can only use Pinnacle Studio 8(standard).

I've noticed that a lot of users in here are able to post files that are like 6.94 megs and such but mine are HUGE. 200-300 megs. Now I've downloaded some of your movies and the quality is great even at that size and looks pretty even when I blow it out to full screen.

What gives? How do you do it?

Thanks again for helping one of the newbies?

[Ignacio Rodriguez]

You can open DV encoded files in QuickTime and save them in MPEG4. You might have to register QuickTime (pay a small fee) to enable this feature. You can do this on any modern Mac or PC (many PC users think QuickTime is limited to the Mac OS but it is not).

[Mikel Low]

Ignacio -

Thanks for the reply & suggestion. Yeah - I'm a registered user of Quicktime already and have exported my work to various different file formats but the quality is not what I desire at this point. I currently use a MAC & PC but I can only afford Pinnacle for the PC - I can't afford the new FCP for my G4.

And I completely agree with you about folks who don't realize the cross functionality of Apple products for the PC. It's a good thing that I've been in technical training & development for the last 15 years. It's just the whole concept of filmmaking - daunting and perhaps a bit intimidating.

Thanks again Ignacio.

[Ignacio Rodriguez]

I see. Perhaps you can get better quality by using FFmpegX (shareware) to make Divx files. I have used that codec to make CD-ROM videos from VHS tapes for clients and the results are quite good.

[Mikel Low]

Thank you ... I think I'll give that a try.

[Trond Saetre]

With Pinnacle Studio 8, you can encode the video as mpeg stream to get small files.
If I remember correct, you have two options:
1. for windows media player
2. for Realplayer

A 10 minute video will be less than 10MB.

I have also tried to make divx with Studio 8 using the divx5.1 codec. But it seems like Studio 8 can't use that codec.

[Mikel Low]

Yeah ... I'm saving up for the new FCP. Pinnacle has many, many limitations but I guess it's serving its purpose for the moment. As for the stream files - yes, the size is small but the quality most definitely suffers. In any event, thank you for the suggestion(s).