Help! I need to compress my files

[Chaobunny12]

I have two .avi files for a con submission, and both are nearly 5 GB. This is too big for the FTP server to handle.

Both are .avi files compressed with HuffyUV. They're 23.976 fps and 1280x720 pixels.

I just don't know how to compress them to a much smaller file size without destroing the quality.

Help please? :3

[Zarxrax]

If the convention can accept mpeg4, I'd go with that instead.

[Chaobunny12]

I'll give it a try.

But, um, how exactly would I go about that? I'm kind of clueless outside .avi's and mpeg files.

I encoded an mp4 once about... two years ago, but that was with an older version of Zarx264gui and goodness knows where my script has gone. And are there codecs I should download?

[Enigma]

Get the newest version of Zarx264gui here , Con's most of the time accept XviD's so you most likely can go with that too

[Chaobunny12]

Okay, thank you!!

Just one more question- what do I use for my avisynth script?

[Enigma]

Well you'll need avisynth and notepad atleast for the most part, You can always use AvsP to make your script files(drag and drop usually works).

[Chaobunny12]

Well I know that; I've got avisynth and all. I mean specifically what should my script look like? :3

[Chaobunny12]

Never mind, I just realized that Zarx264gui will make the Avisynth file automatically.

[Zarxrax]

If you set the quantizer in Zarx264gui to 0, that is lossless just like huffyuv, but it should be smaller than the huffyuv. If you set it to around 10, it should be "visually lossless", and much smaller than the actual lossless one.
Also, be sure to set the audio bitrate higher than the default. Maybe even as high as it will go.

[Chaobunny12]

Ok, I'm getting another error:

Starting...
Encoding Audio Stream
Channels=2, BitsPerSample=16, SampleRate=48000Hz
Done!
x264 [info]: 1280x720 @ 23.98 fps
Encoding video stream pass 1 of 1
x264 [info]: using cpu capabilities: MMX2 SSE2 SSE3 Cache64
x264 [info]: profile High, level 5.0
Cannot find H264 start code
Error importing K:\AMVs\Chaobunny Productions-Falling From Innocence-Paramore-Broken-Air TV.avi.avi-zarx264gui-temp.264: BitStream Not Compliant
Finished!

It won't encode my audio for some reason.