# Reducing size of video (for burnint to CD) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 4, 2003, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-size-of-video-for-burnint-to-cd/205568 "2003-10-04T17:38:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speaker_for_the_Dead)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2003, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-size-of-video-for-burnint-to-cd/205568/1 "2003-10-04T17:38:39Z")
Alright, I have a video that’s been burning a hole in My Documents folder for some time. So, I decided to burn it to CD, just to get it out of the way. Unfortunately, the vid is almost 720 MB, and my CD is a 700 maximum. So I just need to reduce the quality so it will fit. It’s an .avi file, for the record. ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2003, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-size-of-video-for-burnint-to-cd/205568/2 "2003-10-04T18:38:32Z")
I had a similar problem with the movie Casablanca which was about 800 MB. Finally I found some CDR which could take about 900 MB and I copied it there. It was simpler than resizing it. I have another thread going about video editing and, believe me, it is not worth it for a one time thing. The other thing you can do is split it using Winzip and then reconstruct it again later. ---
**Author:** ![Shepherdless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85f322/32.png) [@Shepherdless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shepherdless)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2003, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-size-of-video-for-burnint-to-cd/205568/3 "2003-10-04T20:09:41Z")
Before you try reducing the size of the file you might want to try overburning. Most CDs can hold a little more than 700MB. To do this you need a drive that supports it (most do) and a burning program that allows you to do it. Overburning is more or less safe. The risk is that you may slightly damage the CDRW drive if you try to overburn too much too often. I’ve done it often and have never had a problem. Nero is the program I use. To enable overburning, got to File-\>Preferences-\>Expert Features. You can also calculate the amount of extra bytes available on a particular CDR by using Nero CD Speed utility (under “Extra”). To try to reduce the size of the avi would be a lot of work and would greatly reduce the quality. ---
**Author:** ![maleinblack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@maleinblack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maleinblack)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2003, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-size-of-video-for-burnint-to-cd/205568/4 "2003-10-04T20:13:48Z")
Even I had come across this problem a couple of times. What I did was that changed the settings on my CD writing software (Nero) for allowing overburning.What happens in overburning is that your CD writer writes more than 700 MB data on a 700MB disc.The catch is that not all drives support this facility plus you risk damaging your drive and also you might end up wasting up a lot of discs if they are not done right. I think you can safely overburn 720 MB on a 700MB disc,but try it at your own risk! If you want to play it safe you might try splitting up the movie using software [like this](http://www.nehuenmultimedia.com.ar/html/splitter.html) ,but then you wont be able to enjoy the continuity. ---
**Author:** ![Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speaker_for_the_Dead)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2003, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-size-of-video-for-burnint-to-cd/205568/5 "2003-10-04T21:58:43Z")
Well, I figured out, but it turns out my dream of VCDing it won’t come to fruition. _sighs dramatically_ ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2003, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-size-of-video-for-burnint-to-cd/205568/6 "2003-10-05T04:25:58Z")
(S)VCDs can hold over 800MBytes on a 700MByte disk. This is why you keep seeing movies split into parts \>700Megs all over the net. They are: **not** overburning. **not** using extra size CDRs. Just create a VCD from the MPEG and burn it. Lot’s of software to do this: VCDEasy, Nero, etc. 700MByte discs actually hold a lot more, but some is used for error correction. For VCDs and music CDs, the error correction is incorporated into the data stream. For data CDs, the error correction is allocated separately. See the [CDR FAQ](http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq03.html#S3-24) for more info. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2003, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-size-of-video-for-burnint-to-cd/205568/7 "2003-10-05T14:59:14Z")
Why not use winzip or winrar from [download.com](http://download.com) & just compress it? ---
**Author:** ![juan2003](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b9e5f3/32.png) [@juan2003](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/juan2003)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2003, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-size-of-video-for-burnint-to-cd/205568/8 "2003-10-05T15:41:59Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ftg \* > **Just create a VCD from the MPEG and burn it. Lot’s of software to do this: VCDEasy, Nero, etc.** That will not work because the movie is not an mpeg file; it’s an avi. > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by handy_ > **Why not use winzip or winrar from [download.com](http://download.com) & just compress it?** Movie files usually have very high informational entropy and will compress much. The resulting archive would only be very slightly (~3 MB) smaller than the original file. ---
**Author:** ![juan2003](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b9e5f3/32.png) [@juan2003](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/juan2003)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2003, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-size-of-video-for-burnint-to-cd/205568/9 "2003-10-05T15:44:44Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by juan2003 \* > Movie files usually have very high informational entropy and will compress much._\* will **NOT** compress much :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Kinthalis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kinthalis/32/16084_2.png) [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2003, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-size-of-video-for-burnint-to-cd/205568/10 "2003-10-05T15:52:16Z")
The movie is AVI? Download Gspot (google it) and find out what codecs are being used. Then download virtual dub (google it) and re-encode. Do a search for a bit rate calculator to determine the bit rate of both the audio and video streams so that the movie will fit into 700 mb of space. If you give me the length of the movie I can do a quick calculation now. 😉 Anyway, once you have the best possible bit rate for audio and video, re encode using divx (or xvid is also a good codec) and mp3 for the audio stream. Unless the movie is really long you should not experience much quality loss (be sure to encode the movie atleast twice). ---
**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2003, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reducing-size-of-video-for-burnint-to-cd/205568/11 "2003-10-05T16:30:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ftg \* > (S)VCDs can hold over 800MBytes on a 700MByte disk. This is why you keep seeing movies split into parts \>700Megs all over the net. They are: > > **not** overburning. > **not** using extra size CDRs. You can burn in mode 2 and get more than 700 MB in a CDR _but_ mode 2 gains the space by not using some of the redundancy used for error correction so if that CDR is scratched it may be useless. Regular, mode 1, CDs have much better redundancy and can take more scratches and still be read. > [@](#): > > Just create a VCD from the MPEG and burn it. Lot’s of software to do this: VCDEasy, Nero, etc. That’s a good way to lose quality if the original video file has any.