[MPlayer-users] reducing size of files while conserving the audio/video quality

[LGW]

Maximo Ramos wrote:

>[Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
>Time to reply!
>
>Citando a  D Richard Felker III (dalias at aerifal.cx):
>  
>
>>Getting a CDR drive would be a much better choice. Reencoding will
>>damage quality quite a bit -- you'll have to make the movie look
>>significantly worse to get any significant reduction in size.
>>    
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>
>I already have a CDR :) but I want to stop this burning madness!!
>And some files are way too huge, with mounstrous resolutions!!
>
>Do you agree that a 20 minutes show like SouthPark takes 250MB in 352x240
> MPEG format? 
>
see below :)

> 
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>>>I choosed vbitrate 800 because according with the man page that's the minimum, 
>>>      
>>>
>>No, it says it's the default. 800 is actually much higher than you'll
>>normally use in practice!!
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>>
> 
>oops! yes, my bad! but after doing some tests with very high quality mpeg
>files (recorded somewhere from a HDTV signal), if I choose something lower
>than 1800 I get too much pixelation.
> 
>
Yes, that's why such files should be resized to smaller resolutions. 
Anyway, you will always loose much quality when you re-encode something.

I do it to save space, too. First, there are this bloody 
MPEG1-VCD-Releases. OK, they are great for some shows that are worth one 
CDR per episode, but sometimes it's just madness. The same file, with a 
video quality loss not really noticable on a 71cm TV set can be sized 
down to 350MB (two episodes/CDR) or smaller (then, with quality loss, of 
course). Than, files that are likely watched again, but not for the 
great images, but for the story experiences (like JDoramas - you won't 
need GTO in high quality...). Of course, packing 4 GTO episodes (50 
minutes each) on one CDR with a bitrate slightly below 400 and a 
resolution of 320*240, leads to the dark side of video quality. Smaller, 
the dark side is. But ugly... :)

I'd not advice to reduce the audio quality much. I think a bad audio 
signal is much worse than a bad video signal. Anything less than 
mp3/96kbit is really not nice... or use ogg :)

Just gamble with parameters, but you won't be able to get much better 
results than those you see now...

good luck :)
  Lars

>  
>
>>Rich
>>
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>>    
>>
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