Can anyone suggest an optimal balance between quality and file size for an Xvid AVI? The old 700 MB (1 CD) AVIs don't really look very good. 2 CDs wouldn't be far off the 1.7 GB that I chose for my recent Xvid AVI, but people seem to think it is too big.
Thanks for any suggestions.
The short answer is: you should aim for an average DRF of less than 4.
DRF, or quantization factor, is a measure of how much the video has been compressed. Compression artefacts start getting more noticeable and ugly with higher DRFs.
Achieving your target average DRF is a balance between file size (bitrate), resolution (don't forget to crop black borders) and compressibility of the source. I recommend you get DRF Analyzer and read the readme.
Are you aiming for a particular filesize? Remember you can also convert 5.1 AC3 into 2-channel MP3 to save space.
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Well, people seem to think that 1.7 GB is too big, though as doubleofive pointed out, Adywan's AVI of ANH:R was 1.67 GB, so maybe the size wasn't too big. I basically wanted to know what size of AVI I should be aiming for i.e. what size are people comfortable downloading; what do they expect in terms of a trade off between quick downloads and quality?
I did know about cropping borders and converting the audio, though I wanted to keep the 5.1. Many people like to play the 5.1 on their PS3/Xbox 360s.
I have never really gone into DRF before. :-)
For a 2-hour long film, I would aim for 1400MB (especially if you're keeping the AC3). But then, I'm an old timer who still thinks in multiples of 700MB sized CDs...
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I'll try for 1400 MB next time then. :-)
I'm not sure if anyone still burns films to CDs any more, as DVD-5s are so cheap, and many people just play AVIs from hard drives.
Thank you for your advice, Moth3r.
You're welcome - and thanks for starting a thread in the correct forum.
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