Media Encoding

[problematic]

Hi Everyone!!

Right, heres the deal.

I have a digital TV card in my PC, and have set it up to record a few of my fav TV progs (including The Simpsons).

However, the file sizes which the recording produce are rather large. For instance, the latest episode of the Simpsons, at 30 mins long has engulfed 750MB of my HDD.

I am looking to purchase a portable device for playing mainly videos, bit of music (though I already have small 20GB mp3 player). i have considered the IPod, but am very tempted by the Palm Lifedrive PDA. However, with only 4GB of HDD space (well, about 3.8GB to be precise), its not going to hold many recordings at all.

So the crucks of my request for help is....

What is the best way to encode the videos to make them smaller in size, without a loss of video quality. the PDA screen size is 320x480 pixels, so this would be the size I would be aiming for.

If anyone could give me any advice, point me in the right direction with software etc (especially if the software is free ) I would really really appreciate it!!!

Thank you all for your time, and I look forward to your replies!!!

 

[Inaris]

I use DrDivX. It's not very much, and does a lot. I use it to make movies for Ipaqs and stuff.

 

[EricB]

you will alway lose something by encoding. that said auto gk (free) and win dvdcopy4 are the best mp4 (divx, xvid, avi) encoders out there

 

[problematic]

Ok, but how do people manage to get a near dvd quality film into only 700MB or less????

I mean, if you have ever seen a film downloaded off limewire or morpheus (not that any of you use these I'm sure, lol ) You see brand new DVD rips at about 1.5GB, then after a week or two, they creap down to the magic 700MB mark. How are people able to keep the same quality though???

I tried using the above progs, and they're good for reducing the file size, but as previously mentioned, the quality is reduced too!!

I'm confused!!

 

[office politics]

i use auto gk with a predefined size setting of 600mb. i think im encoding using xvid. i didnt notice a drop in quality.

www.videohelp.com/guides <- for tools drop down pick autogk.

 

[Inaris]

it's all based on the codec you use to encode with. There is a slight loss, with some but by using a good Mpeg4 codec, you can get near dvd quality in about 700mb. Not all videos will get to that number though, since it's based on quality requirements and length of film, but you can get close.

You just need to play around with it a bit to see how to make it look best.

 

[EricB]

mkv is another great codec. it has superior A/V sync qualities too

 

[office politics]

mk3 is another great codec. it has superior A/V sync qualities too

download link? i couldnt find one.

 

[EricB]

I meant mkv

http://www.matroska.org/downloads/windows.html

 

[problematic]

Will vids encoded with mk3 be able to run on devices such as PDA's or IPODs???