Video...

[Transient]

Howdy, anyone here into Video editing and compression. I love Col. Football so I have about 500 gigs of games left to edit and compress for DVD storage. Just wondering what you use and how you use it as far as Divx or Virtualdubmod whatever.
Currently I use Videostudio to record and edit, then DVDshrink to squeeze it more, finally Divx or xvid or get it down to around a gig per game.
Just looking for any ideas out there hehe, thanks.

[jumbopackage]

The fewer times you encode the better off you're going to be. You should be capturing with some sort of lossless codec (i.e. huffyuv). Then compressing directly to divx or xvid 2 pass. I'd use something like gordian knot once you have the video captured, and edited to calculate final file size and bitrate based on the final video length.

I use Sony Vegas to capture HDV from my camcorder via 1394 and edit in raw HDV until I output to the end format.

Your workflow sounds like source->whatever Videostudio does->mpeg2->compressed mpeg2->mpeg4

It's probably better to do source->lossless->mpeg4

[Transient]

Hey thanks for the reply.
Videostudio captures and aloows you to edit the material, so I can pull out halftime and commercials. A typical game is around 12 gigs. So by eliminating the advertisements I can cut out around 4 gigs right off the bat. I dont think it allows you to edit as you capture.
Anyways how do calculate the final file size and bitrate based on the video length? I know AG gives you some preset sizes to "fit" the video into. You can also adjust the size too, I dont know how to compute the file size and bitrate, thanks for all your help.

[jumbopackage]

There are calculators out there. The same bitrate can yield way different qualities, depending on resolution. So you have to determine the resolution you are looking to output, then figure out what level of compression is adequate to produce the quality you are looking for and that will give you a filesize.

Conversely, if you're looking for a specific filesize, you're going to have to sacrifice either resolution or compression.

It's sort of a delicate dance.

Gordian Knot can help you with all that, if you have the file in a .avi format, or have a .d2v or .dvs for it.

You can also calculate it with the xvid "configuration" deal that you get when you set the settings for the xvid codec.

You can also figure it out with one of the many bitrate calculator tools out there, such as Bitrate Calculator | DivX Labs - Everywhere Communication Occurs Community Happens .

My suggested workflow would be:
1. Capture and edit in videostudio.
2. Output final edited video in huffyuv or something of that nature (basically anything losslessly compressed).
3. Determine desired bitrate and resolution required for the video.
4. Open it up in virtualdubmod.
5. Add a resize filter (Video..Filter..Add...Resize...OK) to select the size of the final video
6. Save as...XVID/DIVX etc, set your bitrate or filesize
7. Open a beer or 10 and drink while you wait
Done.

This saves you from having to go through, what appears to be 2 MPEG-2 processing steps, which will cost you quality each time. It should also save you a considerable amount of time.

[Transient]

Do those programs like Huffy have some kind of interface. I dld it but Iam not sure how to implement it, thanks again for all your help.

[jumbopackage]

Originally Posted by Transient

Do those programs like Huffy have some kind of interface. I dld it but Iam not sure how to implement it, thanks again for all your help.

huffyuv is just a codec. if you can export the video to xvid or divx you should be able to export it to huffyuv. I'm not familiar with videostudio, though. In Vegas, you can Render As, select avi, and then chose the huffyuv codec for video.

[Transient]

thanks for all your help!!!