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Compressing from 4.94 to 4.5 GB

I've just finished a small project and then sent it to Compressor (highest quality) and the resulting file is 4.94 GB. (Apple Devices; best quality). It's just a tad too big to burn to a standard DVD and I wonder if you have suggestions for compressing it just a bit more so that the resulting file will fit on a DVD. When I tried Apple Devices; most compatible, the resulting file was around 2 GB.


I'd like to tweak it just a bit so that the project will be small enough to burn to a DVD.


Any suggestions for reducing the eventual file size just enough to fit on a DVD with the minimal amount of effect on the quality of the video?


Thank you.

iMac (27-inch, Late 2013)

Posted on Jul 27, 2015 5:08 PM

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6 replies

Jul 27, 2015 10:52 PM in response to Russ H

Yes, I should have mentioned that I tried the DVD preset and it came out to something like 3.5 GB. However, even though the file size is bigger than the 2 GB "most compatible" option, it appears to me that the 2 gig version looks a tad better. I'm not sure if I'm hallucinating since I've been looking at my computer screen for so long ;-)


In an ideal world, I'd like the file to be just small enough, for example, by 1 MB so that it can look as good as possible and still fit on a standard DVD.


Naive question: does having a layer of "video" underneath another layer of video create a larger file? Since I've set the opacity of all video clips to 100%, my guess is that it should NOT result in a larger file (like a Photoshop file that has multiple layers but is flattened before saving as, say, a .png file.


Thanks for your suggestion; I'll definitely consider going that route.

Jul 28, 2015 4:27 AM in response to bkkrocks

bkkrocks wrote:

I'm not sure if I'm hallucinating since I've been looking at my computer screen for so long ;-)


A computer display won' show it correctly, Evaluated it plays from a DVD player to a TV screen.


bkkrocks wrote:



In an ideal world, I'd like the file to be just small enough, for example, by 1 MB so that it can look as good as possible and still fit on a standard DVD.

You can increase the bit rate and see whether you notice the difference – and (importantly) whether the DVD player plays it smoothly. The higher you go the more like;y it is you will run into playability issues. So probably don't go too far above 7 Mbps (if the length of your video allows even that high of a rate.)




Naive question: does having a layer of "video" underneath another layer of video create a larger file? Since I've set the opacity of all video clips to 100%, my guess is that it should NOT result in a larger file (like a Photoshop file that has multiple layers but is flattened before saving as, say, a .png file.

Your assumption is correct; it won't increase size.


Russ

Aug 1, 2015 1:12 AM in response to Russ H

For what it's worth, I didn't know how to modify the presets and that's basically what I finally decided to do. One preset is referred to as best quality. That is what I wanted: a video with the best quality possible. However, the problem was that the resulting file was just a tad too big to burn to a standard DVD. So after trying this and that, I went back and modified the bit rate. As I played with the bit rate, Compressor would show me the approximate file size. After trial and error, I was able to create an .m4v file that is just small enough to burn but as big as possible without being too big (4.53 GB).


I don't know if anyone else will face a similar situation but that's what I did and I like the quality of the resulting file. (Note that using the preset "most compatible", the file size was 2 GB.)


I hope this thread will help someone in the future; perhaps his/her choice will be different but I hope he/she will be aware of the options available :-)

Compressing from 4.94 to 4.5 GB

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