A friend recently sent me a video she made with her webcam. The video lasted five minutes and was 1.2 gig!
This file was an AVI file. I know that there are entire movies in AVI format that only take up 700 meg.
How do I compress this file into a size that is more manageable? And how can movies which are 90 minutes long only take up 700 megs and this file which is in the same format and is only five minutes long takes up a whooping 1.2 gig?
Thank you in advance for any assistance.
You could convert the movie from .avi to another format that gives you a smaller file size:
Wow. She obviously sent you a completely uncompressed file. Probably at a ridiculously large resolution, too, I’d bet. Is there audio? It’s also likely an uncompressed WAV file, as well.
AVI isn’t a single video file format but, rather, a wrapper that can contain many types of video formats such as Divx, XviD, VP3, Indeo, ATI vcr, etc. When video is captured to an AVI format, it’s often captured uncompressed because compression takes a lot of processor power and can cause skipped frames on a slower computer or one with little RAM.
Your best bet is to download one of the video codecs and do your own compression. Divx is very common and, unlike formats such as Windows Media, Real Video or Quicktime, it doesn’t require propietary software. Next, download VirtualDub, a popular open-source video editing program. Open the file in VDub, adjust your compression settings for both video and audio (MP3 is your best bet) and you should be all set.
The big caveat here is that VirtualDub has a pretty steep learning curve and, if you’re not used to working with video, it may take some time to get the basics down. A few good sites for faqs and tutorials or Doom9 and VCD Help.