DV AVI file size

  • Thread starter Thread starter Newtechie
  • Start date Start date
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Newtechie

I just finished editing an 1/2 hr episode of 'Pimp my Ride' - after editing
it was just 19 min. long. The file was converted from mpeg to dv-avi.
After saving, the ending result was 4gb.

What I would like to accomplish is to put at least 4 episodes on 1 DVD. Is
there a way I can limit the size to 1gb for each file and keep it in dv-avi
format?

Thanks,
newtechie
 
Keep going... all looks normal. Your DVD making software will take the
DV-AVI files and 'transcode' them to the MPEG-2 files needed for the disc...
which will be smaller and fit at least an hour of high quality video on a
DVD.
 
ok thanks PapaJohn

PapaJohn (MVP) said:
Keep going... all looks normal. Your DVD making software will take the
DV-AVI files and 'transcode' them to the MPEG-2 files needed for the
disc... which will be smaller and fit at least an hour of high quality
video on a DVD.
Click to expand...
 
Hiya,

I'm quite new to Windows Movie Maker, but I'm pretty sure this behaviour is
not right. I edited a 15 minute film of my newborn daughter using movie
maker and wanted to save it in MiniDV format (so I had the best quality AVI
file to convert to MPEG so that I could burn it to DVD. The original video
was captured using a firewire connection to my Sony Camcoder and video was
about 22 minutes long and 4Gb in size.

It seemed to take ages for Movie Maker to generate the file, and when it had
finished somehow it had generated an 18Gb file which was 1 hour 26 minutes
long!?!?

I'm completely baffled how it did this. So I tried saving the project with
a different name, choosing a different filename and also a different location
for MovieMaker to output the AVI file to. Again I got an 18Gb file (despite
the fact that the wizard estimated about 3 and a half gig)?

Has anyone had any similar problems? Anything I can do to reesolve this

Thanks In Advance
 
First it would be best to start a new thread. Your question could easily
have been missed in the middle of another thread.
As to the issue:
Did you view the video to see what you had?
We need to know the result of that.
Was it 22 minutes of video then blank for another hour?
Was it 22 minutes of video slowed way down so it take an hour and 26
minutes?
Or does it not play at all.
--
Wojo
MVP - Windows Digital Media

Wojo's Web: www.wojos-web.co.nr
Also please visit:
www.remember-christopher.dostweb.com/christopher
 
Apologies for not starting a new thread, I wasn't sure whether I should or
not. Sorry.

Thanks for getting back to me.

I did view the video that was produced and it did appear to have footage
throughout the 1 hour 26 minutes. And the video *did* appear to be slowed
down (although interestingly -don't know if this is a factor- the audio did
not slow down and jumped in at the correct moment corresponding to where we
were in the video).

I don't know if this is significant either, the wizard when generating the
DV AVI file stuck at 99% for a very, very long time. Now when producing
other file formats (e.g. a PAL WMV) the time estimate was pretty much
accurate, but the DV AVI file took way longer than originally estimated.

This is the only thing that I noticed as odd, does this help at all?

Thanks again

sb
 
That does help, I think.
The problem is likely due to system resources.
When rendering a video project in WMM resources don't much matter except
that rendering will take longer but this is not the case when capturing
video from a DV camera into Movie Maker. If resources are or become low
during the capture process you generally get a speed up of the video due to
dropped frames but it is possible, especially since you are able to capture
in the lower quality formats, that resources have caused this problem as
well.
Have a look at Graham's page on optimizing your PC for video capture, I
couldn't say it any better than he already did:
http://www.myvideoproblems.com/Tutorials/OptimiseMyPcForVideo.htm
One more piece of advice is that it has been my experience that capturing to
High Quality NTSC (WMV) and then using DV-AVI to render the finished project
after editing gives you near perfect results when creating a DVD so another
option would be to capture to High Quality NTSC instead.
-Wojo
 
Hi there,

I tried generating the file again last night and I noticed something (after
sitting through the majority of the 1 hour and 26 minutes output). It's not
that the video that is slow it's that the Movie Maker is not outputting the
contents of the storyboard (which it correctly does when saving as WMV) but
is including everything I imported into the collection. So all my edits have
gone, and where clips have been split, it is ignoring the split and including
the same footage over and over.

I shall look into optimising my PC in the meantime, however if you thing
that High Quality Pal (for me, anyway) is good enough to burn to DVD maybe
that's my best option.

Thank you for your time and your help

Cheers

sb
 
Well what I think is that capturing to the High Quality Pal is fine for the
initial capture but I would still try saving as DV-AVI after your edits are
complete if for no other reason than just to see if it works that way or
not.
You will lose some quality but minimal.
Another possibility is to use one of Papajohn's custom profiles to save. I
am not fully versed, yet, on them all but I know they save as WMV and at a
high quality so you may want to try that out. www.papajohn.org

-Wojo
 
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