Recommended settings for compressing AVI clips with TMPGEnc?

[Jerry Vanderberg]

I have a number of AVI clips (taken with a Canon S30) that I have appended to one another (with VirtualDub) and that I am compressing with TMPGEnc to make an MPEG file. My problem has been creating too much compression. For instance, a 694MB AVI file has been compressing to only 15.3MB, with an obvious loss in viewing quality. I have read a stack of help files on this but the number of possible combinations of TMPGEnc settings is staggering and I can’t seem to get a reasonable compression (say by about 2/3) that shows only limited deterioration of the compressed file. Here is what I am using (based on some suggestions from Lord.Hypnos a while back - which he used to compress to around 30% of the original). What do I need to change to get less compression and a better image?

Video: (MPEG-1)
Framerate: 24fps
Rate control mode: Automatic VBR
Quality: 80
Max bitrate: 600kb/s
Size 320x240
Aspect Ratio 1:1 VGA

Audio:
Stream Type: MPEG 1 Layer II
Sampling freq: 32kHz
Channel mode: mono
Bitrate: 32kb/s

Even when I increase the max bitrate to 6000kb/s, the quality to 100, and do a 2-pass VBR, I compress to about 40MB.

[lord.hypnos]

I can't believe that with quality and bitrate maxed out that you would compress a 694MB file down to only 40MB unless the video is uncompressed. You should notice very little change in quality with max settings.

Is your source video 320x240? If it isn't then set your resolution to the appropriate size.

If you are using VirtualDub to append the files, compressing them, and then opening the file in TMPGEnc, and recompressing the merged video, of course you are going to have a loss of quality.

Do you absolutely need MPEG compression? If not use something that's been developed within the past 10 years such as DivX, XviD, etc for the video and MP3 for the audio. That would give you the best quality with the smallest filesize.

[juggler]

Hi,

Is there a way to ungrey the video settings? Virtually all of them are greyed out.

--juggler

[juggler]

When I use tmpgenc, the program does convert. However, my mpgs appear to be twice the height and width of the original movies. Is there a way to make it so that the conversion results in a size similar to the source AVI?

Thanks.