[MPlayer-users] compressing an avi.

[Jack]

Jon Morris wrote:

>The problem is my 120gb drive is filling up quick with the 300mb 30 min episodes.  All of these are currently .avi files.  Is there a way to compress these to save space?  
>
Depending on the resolution, and what format they're currently encoded 
in, you might be able to get them down to around 200mb an episode and 
still have reasonable quality just by reencoding them to mpeg4 with 
lavc/mencoder's default options.  Fitting a TV show into 175-233 MB is 
quite a common task.

See the online docs for examples of mencoder usage.  You will find that 
there are many lavc options that decrease file size / increase quality 
at the expense of encoding time.  These include, but are not limited to 
trell, v4mv, and mbd=2.  See the online docs on dvd encoding for tips - 
most of that stuff should carry over to what you're doing.

You might want to use another program to delete the commercials first, 
though.  That'll definitely save some space.

-jack