DIGIT-ARC read-only archive · snapshot: July 23, 2026

Compress videos??

31 posts · originally from https://geek.digit.in/community/threads/compress-videos.150733/

Neo
Neo Original post #1
Dec 31, 2011 at 7:44 PM
I have seen many movie torrents that are about 500 in size yet they have a full movie in 720p resolution.
how do they compress the movie so highly?
Neo
Neo #3
Jan 1, 2012 at 6:17 PM
but thats for DVDs etc. I want to compress that.
meetdilip
Jan 2, 2012 at 1:08 PM
Dr. DivX may be ?
meetdilip
Jan 2, 2012 at 1:59 PM
Dr. DivX | Free Audio & Video software downloads at SourceForge.net
skeletor
Jan 2, 2012 at 5:16 PM
"Compress" videos is not the right thing to say.

Encoding videos is what you should be talking about.
Zangetsu
Jan 2, 2012 at 5:35 PM
I have seen many movie torrents that are about 500 in size yet they have a full movie in 720p resolution.
how do they compress the movie so highly?

Compressing (a.k.a Encoding) is applicable to both DVD & HD Movie...

just use a good encoding software to do the same.

such as Format Factory,Any Video Converter or virtualdub etc
clmlbx
clmlbx #9
Jan 2, 2012 at 7:00 PM
that movies with size of 500MB and resolution of 720P are very low quality videos.. compare it with actual or even with 2GB around rips and you will find the difference. IMO 720P should be at least around 2GB to worth watching(If you talk about HD).. How that is done.. It is just, as in example here

this 500MB movies are encoded in MP4 or MKV.which are very good containers with gr8 quality and low size. plus this type of videos have very low bit rate that makes them low on size..

If you convert any movie with any converter with choosing mp4 or mkv and selecting lowest bitrate possible and then you can get lowest size.. Many converters has option to select quality according to Size.. So just you have to enter size you wish and it will choose best bitrate possible.
Neo
Neo #10
Jan 5, 2012 at 3:27 AM
what's the bitrate?
skeletor
skeletor #11
Jan 5, 2012 at 3:54 AM
what's the bitrate?
Bit rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Higher the bitrate, better the quality, more the file size.

Lower the bitrate, lower the quality, lower the file size.
Neo
Neo #12
Jan 5, 2012 at 11:30 AM
how does the bitrate affect the quality?
500MB plays the same movie in 720p whereas the 2GB does the same thing.
Zangetsu
Zangetsu #13
Jan 5, 2012 at 12:23 PM
how does the bitrate affect the quality?
500MB plays the same movie in 720p whereas the 2GB does the same thing.

u haven't compared those two files media info side by side?

bitrate is like the amount of bandwidth supplied during video playback....
Sujeet
Sujeet #14
Jan 5, 2012 at 12:41 PM
Hnadbrake(video encoding/compression) is your ultimate lifesaver combined with some good format converter like video converter factory and format factory..even Vlc does fine in standard format conversion(although i dont advise it for large files)
skeletor
skeletor #15
Jan 5, 2012 at 8:45 PM
how does the bitrate affect the quality?
500MB plays the same movie in 720p whereas the 2GB does the same thing.
The video quality in the 500 MB file is much less. Not worthy enough to be run on a home theatre or on a 32" or greater screen.
Vyom
Vyom #16
Jan 5, 2012 at 9:20 PM
^^ The way I understand it, royal.tarun wants to know, the "exact" thing which is compromised in that 500 MB vid with respect to the 2 GB vid.

Or in other words, he (and I) want to know what exactly will the difference of bitrates would make practically while watching the movie?

("the amount of bandwidth supplied during video playback" also doesn't give a fair idea).
skeletor
skeletor #17
Jan 5, 2012 at 9:26 PM
What would be the *exact* thing compromised in a 500 MB rip and the 2 GB rip of the same thing? Video quality obviously. :rolleyes: ;) :)

Take screenshots and compare the pixels of a still.
Vyom
Vyom #18
Jan 5, 2012 at 9:34 PM
So, the video of a 500 MB vid would be blurred or not sharp w.r.t to the 2 GB vid.
That wasn't that hard to answer, was it?? ;)

Thanks.
Zangetsu
Zangetsu #19
Jan 6, 2012 at 10:01 AM
So, the video of a 500 MB vid would be blurred or not sharp w.r.t to the 2 GB vid.
That wasn't that hard to answer, was it?? ;)

yes...that is why we see why blu-ray .M2TS files are worth 30~50GB in size for ultimate quality :)
Neo
Neo #20
Jan 6, 2012 at 5:45 PM
K. thanks guys.
And I was thinking people are fools who download such big files. lol.
clmlbx
clmlbx #21
Jan 6, 2012 at 6:31 PM
^^ :lol: you will find it more important if you have larger screens like 30+.. then you can immediately pick up difference between low bit rate video and high bit rate video.. no focus -background area will be very blurry in low bit rate while in High bit rate it will be sharp..
parth.khopkar96
Jan 6, 2012 at 10:25 PM
I download such movies too...They are generally in mkv format. It is able to play good video(better than avi atleast) even at low file size. Of course there would be difference between mp4 blu-ray and mkv blu-ray.
Neo
Neo #24
Jan 7, 2012 at 11:56 AM
they r same if media settings are same in both MP4 & MKV like bitrate,fps etc

Will their size be different? I guess they will.
T
Tarun #25
Jan 7, 2012 at 12:11 PM
i use Format Factory for it i should say pretty good
i usually convert to 640x480 or 720p MKV @ 512 bit rate at min and 726 or something like that at max but keep in mind the Movie or the video should be in a HD quality or something which pretty clean to see bcoz while this the quality goes down abit but not that visible on a PC monitor
Zangetsu
Zangetsu #26
Jan 7, 2012 at 5:27 PM
Will their size be different? I guess they will.

Yes..size will differ & also mkv is popular on internet ;)

i use Format Factory for it i should say pretty good
i usually convert to 640x480 or 720p MKV @ 512 bit rate at min and 726 or something like that at max but keep in mind the Movie or the video should be in a HD quality or something which pretty clean to see bcoz while this the quality goes down abit but not that visible on a PC monitor

FF is much better than AVC :p
aswin1
aswin1 #27
Jan 8, 2012 at 12:48 AM
MKV video files are reasonably good but sound quality is another matter. MP4 is better in this regard.
R
RahulB #28
Jan 9, 2012 at 3:19 PM
1.) You can compress a movie to 500 MB by using lower bitrate, I guess a video bitrate of 700 to 800 kbps and audio bitrate of 92 kbps ( HE-AAC ) is used.

2.) Bitrate is no measure of quality, proper settings and filters can give great results, however when you go to such low bitrate for HD resolutions quality will suffer no matter what settings you use because the encoder just cannot supply sufficient amount of bits during encoding ( starved ).

3.) Proper settings are important, you must have seen videos with high bitrate ( ex - 8000 kbps ) but their quality is lower than some files with lower bitrates, why, improper settings.

4.) You can create such videos using Handbrake, here is the guide

*www.thinkdigit.com/forum/tutorials/149241-video-encoding-beginners.html

just lower the bitrate according to your preferences

5.) Bitrate refers to the amount of data allocated per second of video ( kilo-bits-per-second ), how this allocation is done depends on the encoder and settings used, better algorithms will do better allocation but will be slower.

6.) MKV and MP4 are only containers, video and audio quality has nothing to do with the containers used but with the codec used, MP4 and MKV are both modern containers and work very well for H.264 codec, both MKV and MP4 support H.264 very well, you can use either of these containers for your audio-video needs, with absolutely no difference in quality...

>>>> There are few differences between MKV and MP4 though, like
- MP4 ( A derivative of MOV ) is more natively supported on a variety of devices ( iPod, iPads etc ) than MKV.

- MKV container supports more formats than MP4, example you cannot mux AC-3 audio in MP4

- MKV supports virtually any audio video compared to the limited support on MP4, plus it is open ( freely license ) so it is the recommended format...

Also note container overhead is same for MP4 and MKV, unlike M2TS.

Here is a great Wikipedia article ( Table ) comparison of different containers, do check it out

Comparison of container formats - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

:)) :)) :))
Vyom
Vyom #29
Jan 9, 2012 at 9:31 PM
Nicely written RahulB! :)
Neo
Neo #30
Jan 10, 2012 at 10:22 AM
Now that's what I needed. Thanks a lot.
R
RahulB #31
Jan 10, 2012 at 2:09 PM
No problemo! :))