Some newbie help please...

[confusedofsurrey]

I'm kinda new to video editing / managing / resizing and I've got a bit of a problem. I'm copying some old DV tapes from my camcorder to my PC but they are all about 12Gb .avi files...

I've read a few guides on here and tried a few programs that were reccomended like autogk but I can't seem to shrink the files.

AutoGK starts, sits there for about half an hour then stops with an error message saying something like:

"Source is considered to be interlaced"

help... :(

[Ghitulescu]

Well, indeed the source is interlaced.

12GB is about 1 hour of DV video.

"I want to shrink" says nothing about what you intend to do with them.

[confusedofsurrey]

I just need to make the file sizes smaller for storage...

12Gb for one hour seems wildly excessive given it's not even HD...

Surely as you can fit a couple of hours of similar resolution on a 4.3Gb DVD 12Gb is too much?

Can you recommend a program to shrink this please?

[2Bdecided]

It's what comes straight out of your camcorder.

Most people who care about quality and intend to actually use the footage will keep those raw files. They're 25Mbps, and ideal for editing (you can cut on any frame without re-encoding). Uncompressed video is 5x that bitrate.

DVDs of home movies are typically ~8Mbps, i.e. 1 hour per disc. Trying to cram 2 hours of shaky noisy amateur footage onto a DVD usually leaves visible blocking etc. It's not like encoding a pristine well-shot carefully lit hollywood movies, which can look good at far lower bitrates.


If you still want to shrink it, the question is still "Shrink it to what?". DVD MPEG-2? H.264? There are some threads about the pros and cons of each.

Cheers,
David.