The Super Duper Video Compression Tutorial

[icemonkey9]

As requested, here is the link to the tutorial. You will see that if you consider the file size and the quality of the video, it is absolutely outstanding. I have seen other videos get to the 2mb/minute area, but they are almost universally unwatchable and don't have any audio.

The ZIP file is 50mb, it has the AVI version of a sample 35 second video (38mb), the same video as a 35 second MOV file (2.1mb), and the compression tutorial video.

The Compression Tutorial Video is 5 minutes long, at 800x600 dimension size, and is 10.8mb in size total. And it's darn near crystal clear in video and audio - so enjoy, and if you like the video please let me know, that way I know I didn't do it for nothing!!!

LINK: [broken link~tb]

Enjoy!

 

[ChuckTs]

"the file you are trying to access is temporarily unavailable"

edit: nevermind! Downloading fine now

Thanks for this icemonkey - this could make videos multiple times more popular here on CC with the file size. I hate quicktime, but I'll manage it

 

[ChuckTs]

Something that happens two or three times in the tutorial video is the audio quality changes from good to bad for a few seconds - is this fixable?

 

[KingCurtis]

ty i see you posted in my other thread and this should help me if i pay attention and do things right.!!

 

[icemonkey9]

That might be because:

a) my cat jumped on me while recording the audio
b) I used my webcam as my microphone
c) some weird ZIP compression error or file transfer error

Not sure. Plays fine on my work computer and home computer (both in different geographical places.

Anyways, hopefully you get the gist and we can see better videos from all, and I do think if people take some time to learn this quick technique, we'll see a boat load of new videos.

 

[ChuckTs]

Well I'll be using it for sure. Thanks again for the tip!

 

[icemonkey9]

Sure, thanks for your tips now and in the future on my play. Anything I can do to give back to the poker community

 

[SavagePenguin]

Camtasia is pretty expensive, huh?

I use a free video capture program called CamStudio. It does not have the option to record in MOV format, but I can choose from the following:
Microsoft Video 1
DivX MPEG-4 Low-Motion
DivX MPEG-4 Fast-Motion
Microsoft MPEG-4 VKI Codec V1
Microsoft MPEG-4 VKI Codec V3
Microsoft MPEG-4 VKI Codec V3
DivX Codec 4.12
DivX 6.8 Codec )1 Logical CPU)
XviD MPEG-4 Codec
Helix Yv12YUV Codec
ffdshow Video Codec


Perhaps you can recommend one?

 

[icemonkey9]

Yeah I tried out CamStudio, I was wholly disappointed in the ability to not use the new DiVX 6.8 codec with it. I installed the codec (in addition to the h.264 codec) and each time I tried encoding the video with one of those two, the program would crash.

If you can get the DivX 6.8 to work, then GREAT. Tht should be the best one. I'd be curious to see how the XviD MPEG-4 would do too.

 

[KingCurtis]

yeah i am using camstudio now just trying to learn it because i never did anything like this before...but want to star analyzing matches and tournaments them post them for analasis....,

 

[SavagePenguin]

If you can get the DivX 6.8 to work, then GREAT. Tht should be the best one. I'd be curious to see how the XviD MPEG-4 would do too.

I got an error with the DivX 6.8.
I tried the XviD MPEG-4 without sound at 630x450. I recorded three minutes of beautiful video and the file ended up being 2.8MB.

My laptop is pretty old (I turned off video compression) but didn't have performance issues.

 

[Munchrs]

Can you jst post the 10 min tutorial please IceMonkey

 

[SavagePenguin]

Can you just post the 10 min tutorial please IceMonkey

Just the vid. 10.6MB You have dial-up or something? (I do at home, so I DL stuff at work and take it home.)

Thanks a lot BTW, Icemonkey.

 

[icemonkey9]

My pleasure , I'm dying to see some videos produced with the help of the tutorial!

 

[bob_tiger]

i think this is what i need to see but it says temporarily unavailable????

 

[icemonkey9]

bump. Can we sticky this since so many ask for it?

 

[dmorris68]

Well I just posted about CamStudio in the sticky thread, before reading here that you guys are already aware of it. Oops. :embarasse

It's an extra step, but if you want to use CamStudio as a free capture tool, you can transcode the resulting AVI to just about any format you want (including MP4/DivX/XviD) using something like Super or any number of other transcoding tools.

Personally I like Flash for streaming web videos, as you can embed and watch it right in the forum, without downloading or launching an extra player. The only catch is you have to have a place to host it that can stream it, so file hosting sites like MegaUpload or RapidShare won't work. If I had an idea of the bandwidth required (number of members viewing these videos) I could possibly slice off a portion of one of my web servers to host them.

 

[icemonkey9]

Another bump. I wish this would get stickied.

 

[Jurn8]

well after 15 hours of rendering my video and now it says 25 hours to upload this onto megaload i was starting to get annoyed but now i found this so hope this shortens the time . My video is only an hour long ! 328 mb !!

 

[Jurn8]

HOLY SHIT !! 328mb compressed into 56mb !!! took 2 and half hours to render and now im uploading to megaupload with an estimated time of 40 mins well a massive thanks to ice for this post yet again CC saves the day!!

 

[kleitches]

I use Cam Studio and have recently made two videos. I already posted the first video on here, the second one will have to wait because it's ONE FREAKING GIG. Does anyone else use Cam Studio to make their vids? I'd like to know if anyone else is having problems with getting huge file sizes. Also, my audio and video are completely out of sync by the end of the video if it's more than 25 minutes long. Suggestions, anyone?

 

[icemonkey9]

I verified today that the link is still working.

 

[Curvamitica]

you can change 3gp for avi ?? how

what's the better format of video ??

 

[bigjoker66]

video compression

I'll separate this into 3 parts 1) Capture 2) Codec 3) Compress

1) You can capture video from your screen in many ways with various software. Some of this software compresses while it captures. I have found this to result in poor video, that is still fairly large. I use the free software Camstudio found here: http://camstudio.org/

A few notes on capturing. Under Options>Video Options use under compressor use: CamStudio Lossless Codec v1.4
Set Quality to 70, Set key frames every 40 frames
The next is critical so your audio and video don't get out of sync. Capture frame every 100ms and playback rate: 10 frames/sec

With these settings you get about 60MB/min on a 1024x768 screen.

2) you will probably need codecs to compress and decompress the video. A good all around codec pack is the K-lite codec pack found here: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_lite_codec_pack.htm


3) Compression I use the free software Mediacoder found here: http://www.mediacoderhq.com/index.htm
I have found the h.264 format to provide some of the best compression while still retaining quality. Mode should be "quality Based". One of the best file types to be flash. Although wmv will produce a smaller file with almost as good video.
In audio I set it to mp3 at 64Kbps in CBR rate mode and mono channel.

With these setting I get about 50:1 compression so the 60Meg/min becomes about 1.2 Meg/min. Not to bad.

Hope this helps people capture and compress videos.

 

[Stick66]

I'll separate this into 3 parts 1) Capture 2) Codec 3) Compress

1) You can capture video from your screen in many ways with various software. Some of this software compresses while it captures. I have found this to result in poor video, that is still fairly large. I use the free software Camstudio found here: http://camstudio.org/

A few notes on capturing. Under Options>Video Options use under compressor use: CamStudio Lossless Codec v1.4
Set Quality to 70, Set key frames every 40 frames
The next is critical so your audio and video don't get out of sync. Capture frame every 100ms and playback rate: 10 frames/sec

With these settings you get about 60MB/min on a 1024x768 screen.

2) you will probably need codecs to compress and decompress the video. A good all around codec pack is the K-lite codec pack found here: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/K_lite_codec_pack.htm


3) Compression I use the free software Mediacoder found here: http://www.mediacoderhq.com/index.htm
I have found the h.264 format to provide some of the best compression while still retaining quality. Mode should be "quality Based". One of the best file types to be flash. Although wmv will produce a smaller file with almost as good video.
In audio I set it to mp3 at 64Kbps in CBR rate mode and mono channel.

With these setting I get about 50:1 compression so the 60Meg/min becomes about 1.2 Meg/min. Not to bad.

Hope this helps people capture and compress videos.

I have been eagerly awaiting this post, BJ. Thanks for this. Possibly deserves it's own thread?