Software to reduce Movie size

This question must have been asked 100 times

I want to share my mpg and wmv movies with others. So I need to reduce the file size while retaining a good picture quality.

What software can i use to do this.

If you dont mind changing format to avi then DrDivX is very simple to use...

go with divx or xvid. wmv is actually not a bad format to use. most people use pc's, and with pc's comes windows media player, so they can all play wmv's. for divx and xvid, u also have to tell them to get the codecs

i have tried using DrDivx, but a 700 .mpg movies came to 100 .avi, which was still too much.

I normally use WinAvi, which is easy enought to use. But it does not any option to reduce the resolution of the movie.

I think what I need is a software that allows me to reduce the resolution of the movie. Perhaps in this way, i will be able to reduce the movie size and yet retain a good picture.

what do u think????

How long are these movies?

For reasonable quality release groups usually compress a 45 minute TV episode into about 350MB. Depending on the sound quality that's usually in the region of 850 to 1000 kbps video rate.

If you go less than about 750 kbps the quality starts to suffer.

I've seen the same 45 minute episodes compressed to 80MB, and frankly they aren't worth watching.

wat about Rmvb?

chage to divx and compress using winrar, then just tell them to uncompress the movie

Try using VirtualDub. It's not as straight-forward as other methods, but it does the job. Here's a guide to help you out. Remember also to compress the audio stream to MP3 for better results.

Also, try using this Bitrate Calculator, which lets you input your ideal file size and tells you what bitrate to encode the movie to.

Like Lynx says tho, compress it too much and it'll be unwatchable. Compressing 700MB to under 100 seems a bit much.