Shrinking filesize of avi files

[2Air]

hi all i'm new here and haven't got a clue in what subcategorie to post my question, so don't shoot me ;)

i have a clip in avi format, that's 1m27sec long, stored on the hd and it came from my digital camera.
Now the filesize for 87seconds of film is a staggering 270mb

does anyone know how i can down the size without the loss of quality?
I allready tried different ways, but allways with los of qualtiy, meaning horizontal lines frequently screw the image of the vid

thx alot for the help

[CWR03]

You will always have a loss of quality when you reduce the size of a video file - the things to consider is what will be an acceptable quality loss, and what you intend to do with the end file.

If it's for sharing via e-mail, you might as well give up on keeping full quality and use Windows Media Video or Real Media. You could use XviD for this too, but it would mean that anyone you send it to would need to install the XviD codec.

If it's for future editing, there are some lossless codecs that have some compression, such as HuffYUV. It will still have a large file size, but it should be less than 270MB for an 87 second file.

[foxyshadis]

If you use xvid, there's an "interlaced" option that you must check if you don't deinterlace your video. The you should find that quality is pretty good, although you might need a rather high bitrate to keep from losing any quality.

If you really need your video smaller, DV usually lets you record in a low-qualiy mode, but it's much better to have the best to edit and fix up before final compression. If it's possible, try to keep the raws for a later date, too.

CWR: It's very doubtful a lossless codec will be smaller than DV. (Full 720x576 or 720x480.) In fact, they're usually about double (FFV1) to triple (HuffYUV) the size.

[2Air]

righty, alot of what u both said is chinees to me :D

but, i understand that xvid codec (which i allready have) would do the trick right?

so how do i go about it all
which programme to use and such...

[CWR03]

so how do i go about it all
which programme to use and such...
That information is all over this forum. Most video editing programs will work with XviD. You need to decide on what fits your needs on your own by self-education and some trial-and-error unless you can better describe what you plan to do with the end file.

[2Air]

ooow euh, just save it on hd

i'll snoop around here, thx for the help all

just to help me on my way, which of the AVI Editing tools do u recommend?
something straightforward and easy to use

[setarip_old]

Hi!

Try using "VirtualDub"...

[Adion]

Personally I think AutoGK is suited for this as well. You can just select your source avi, and select the output size that you want, and it will do all other things automatically.
Then it's just a matter of trying a few times with different sizes to see which size still gives acceptable quality.

[CWR03]

One major problem with using AutoGK for that task is that it has difficulty maintaining a proper aspect ratio when re-encoding a video. Without any manual control over the output AR, unless you check Original it rarely keeps it correct when downsizing the file, and checking it can severely reduce the quality.