How do I increase video quality while keeping it a small file?

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Guest

I have been editing videos for a while. I like to publish my videos on the
internet after i finish editing but I usually end up with a big file. The
other day I downloaded a video with amazing quality and small size and I
wrote down the properties ( 976kbps bit rate, 720 x 576 video size, aspect
ratio 4:3, Windows media Audio 9.1 48kbps, 44 Khz stereo 2 pass). Can
somebody explain to me how can I achieve these specifications with windows
movie maker?
 
Not sure with movie maker,however you can with WM encoder 9 series.Edit
the clip,or open the encoder,select,convert audio/video,adjust as you
like...
 
Although you say "amazing quality", I'd ask if you tried to view the
video at full screen, because at smaller viewing size, many videos of
mediocre quality appear good.

The one piece of information you didn't provide is the type of video
compression used in this file, and this is likely the most important
criterion here. At any given bitrate, some compression algorithms do a
better job than others. Having said that, my opinion is that the
several CODECs popular these days are not that far apart from each
other. This is not to say that there are no differences.

MPEG4 based compressions provide the best quality at relatively low
bitrates, such as the one you indicate. If you use an editing product
like VirtualDub, and if you have the appropriate CODECs installed (I
recommend FFDSHOW, which will do just about any type of compression),
you can select the the type of compression and bitrate. Your results
should not differ much from what you see in the clip you like, if your
source material is of good quality.

One thing to point out is that one must be careful in evaluating the
quality of a video. It is one thign to obtain a result which does not
show obvious pixelation, and it is another to obtain a result which is
as sharp as the original. Thus, it is possible to create a video that
looks "pretty good" because it looks smooth and contains no pixelation
effects, but upon closer examination one can see that it is smooth
because the detail has been smeared.

My own recent experiments, though not exhaustive, lead me to think that
XVID provides better quality than DivX and the Microsoft MPEG4
derivatives. Try a few of these with bitrates that produce files of the
size you want and compare the results.
 
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