Quality vs. Compression

Arcane Azmadi · Post by **Arcane Azmadi** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 8:36 pm

Pretty obvious topic, and one probably discussed before. How do most people balance video/audio quality with file size when finalising their AMVs? Speaking for ourselves, Dizzy Samurai ALWAYS prioritizes quality above everything else. We paid for this in the past when we weren't very good at compression, but even with our new skills (learning how to compress the audio for example) our smallest video is still over 60 meg. How about eveyone else? (Note: by "everyone else" I do not count those who make 2-hour Linkinball AMVs which are only 10 meg and use footage that looks like it has been run over by, in succesion, a freight train, a bulldozer and a marching band.)

Ileia · Post by **Ileia** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 8:42 pm

I try to incorporate a little of both. Some people will dismiss watching an AMV (that might be awesome) if it takes too long to download it. I'm not that impatient, but alot of others are.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 8:47 pm

I always want my videos to look good. Size is always a secondary concern for me.

Perhaps a few people on a slow connection might have to wait a little longer for a nice quality video to download, but crappy video quality is crappy for everyone.

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 8:59 pm

I try to encode two versions of each video, so as to please both the quality whores (like myself) <i>and</i> those who want small files (within bounds of reason).

bum · Post by **bum** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 9:04 pm

I allways do encodes that hover a litt under 10MB/minute, just following Read <a href=http://www.a-m-v.org/guides/avtech31/>ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides</a>.

dj_ultima_the_great · Post by **dj_ultima_the_great** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 9:07 pm

aielI_Ileia wrote:Some people will dismiss watching an AMV (that might be awesome) if it takes too long to download it. I'm not that impatient, but alot of others are.

I agree. I try to tell people that in all of the opinions I give where I think the filesize is a little much. I have cable, so I don't worry about wait time, since it's never that long anyway. I go with the 10MB/second thing, too, though. Of course, I use Windows Movie Maker II, so there goes my credibility. Don't tell arigatomina I said that...

- dj_ultima_the_great

dj_ultima_the_great · Post by **dj_ultima_the_great** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 9:08 pm

dj_ultima_the_great wrote:I go with the 10MB/second

Woah. Bad typo there. 10MB/minute, I meant.

Ileia · Post by **Ileia** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 9:08 pm

dj_ultima_the_great wrote:
dj_ultima_the_great wrote:I go with the 10MB/second
Woah. Bad typo there. 10MB/minute, I meant.

LOL, you caught it before I got to it!

downwithpants · Post by **downwithpants** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 9:20 pm

smoothing filters can reduce filesize and improve quality.

i usually encode at around 2000 kb/s.

devilmaykickass · Post by **devilmaykickass** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 9:32 pm

I go for as small as possible with satisfactory quality...I need a balance because I want a nice looking result, but I'm also on dialup, so it takes me like, 6 hours to upload a 50MB file.

But really there's no need for a video under five minutes to be rediculously large, like 95MB, which seems to be a growing trend....it's annoying.