Video codecs Created 13 years ago2010-07-05 18:32:09 UTC by DiscoStu

For years I've been in need of a way to encode my videos with Premiere, in a decent quality and an acceptable file size. Premiere actively refuses to encode in proper DivX (which has a decentish quality and low file sizes) but I don't know of any others with those qualities. Those I try usually have either a horrible video quality or a huge file size, or both.

Does anyone have any advice here for me?

Thanks!

I'm curious about this one too, because I heard somebody render his videos in raw avi format and then use some obscure program called "Legion 1.5" to encode his videos in h.264(more than decent quality and very good file size).

Premiere can encode in H.264. I'll try it the next time I'm doing a video.

Export to windows media video, and choose 90-100% quality. My fraps videos get compressed from around 3-4GB into 200-300MB.

I found mpeg and divx blocky and inefficient

I have a problem with an .avi file that I recorded with my webcam, using the program: captureflux

the file size says 1.44gb but it won't open, I've tried all the programs i have, winmediaplayer, classicwinmediaplayer, vlc, quicktime, realplayer, neroshowtime. but they either crash, or run 1 second of audio making a tearing sound. if i click on the file or open the properties of it, windowsexplorer (NOTE: NOT internet explorer)

I've ran it through a number of 'avi fixer' programs but no success there, and when i opened it in Gspot, it claimed that the file runs for 8 hours! and that there is 1.2gb of unnecessary data at the end of the file. Strange considering that the file should have only taken 1hour max.

AVI is not a codec, it's a container format that can contain video or audio coded with pretty much any codec. Matroska Video, MKV, is another (open-source) container format.

DivX and Xvid are both groups of video codecs, the latter being open-source and generally just more cosy (no one likes corporations). DivX and Xvid codecs are usually quite customisable, but are generally considered superior in terms of size and quality ratio, compared to the industry giants:
Window's WMV and Apple's QuickTime, both proprietary video compression formats.

H.264 is not a codec, but a video compression standard. DivX and Xvid both support H.264 (well... some versions of DivX and Xvid.)

There's a lot of confusion out there about this stuff (not surprising considering the confusing filenames of many video files), I hope this post clears things up. Try Wikipedia for further reading

ashepard, sounds like a corrupt file, if you ask me. Probably lost, I'm afraid.

@commieman: how long is the video? I know I can get ok video with DivX at a rate of about 40mb/minute.

@zombie: thanks. I'll look into it.

Doh, I wrote a bunch of stuff and closed the tab.

As I was saying earlier, the last video I rendered was 5:27 long at was 200MB. It was 1280x720, 30fps and the total bitrate was 9491kbps (90% quality wmv)

Instead of describing how it looks, I'll show you one of my older videos. there's a balance of dark scenes and light scenes, plus a lot of fast-moving objects. The source video is 8:38 long and 407MB (1280x720, 30fps) but was only 8517kbps, maybe I chose 80/85% quality, I don't remember. Anyway, be sure to click HD 720p and expand/pop-out the vid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RevGOjyxRLQ

The original video on my PC is marginally clearer than the youtube version. Hope this helps!

Damn, so there's nothing I can do?