kepo-ing Zz85

I first started playing around with video compression about 5 years ago (after gotten interest in audio compression too). Since loss-less compression wouldn’t work well with videos formats, playing with lossly compression could a uncompressed avi to 1/3 and then depending on what you do, even a compressed vcd format (mpeg-1) to another 1/3.

Perhaps I first learned about the vcd format which is mpeg1. VCDcutter then was a cool tool I tried using.

So I moved on VirtualDub w/ mpeg (hacked ones), divx codecs (xvid came later), where there are plenty much more options to work with.

I tried Media Cleaner to produce quicktime files.

Then came along the release of Windows Media 8 and I tried the beta and it did impress me it could produce the best quality at the lowest size. Of course nowadays you can get the Windows Media Encoder or Movie Maker included in Windows for easy usage. Windows Media version is now either 9 or 10 with lots of other features including HD and lossless formats.

Talking about lossless codecs, the APE or monkey audio format is one of my favorite. Not too long ago, I notice some promising video lossless codecs, one of them being Alparysoft Lossless Video Codec

Talking about codecs, you wouldnt want to miss out on this webpage Free Codecs. One of the fravorites again is the K-Lite codec pack with Real and Quicktime alternative. Not forgetting another interesting compression subject I touch on before is KVcd- which lets you encodes videos on VCDs or DVDs such that it contains much more length but at a maintained quality playable on vcd/dvd players.

Back to subject, I realised nowadays Real media compression gives really good quality at the small size. Actually Real compression was one of the first I used, considering that I used MusicMatch jukebox long time ago. Nowadays, rmvb(Real Media variable bitrate) are the preferred video releases by china groups if you have noticed.

A DVD quality file sizes about 400mb instead of 700mb. Drawsides, more cpu is needed. You might get lots of lag if you are running a cpu below 500mhz. The latest version for real codecs is now 10. Sometime ago, (after RealOne player was released), part of real was open sourced under Helix I think.

So how do you encode rmvb easily. This was what I learn recently. 1 tool you might only need is Easy RealMedia Producer. Here’s a very cool tutorial on the subject .

Mind you though, encoding takes lots of CPU power (so you now get 1 way using all the idle cpu potential you have), with my 2.8GHz Hyper-threading cpu, converting to ~400kbps vbr file would cost more than 1min encoding for 1 min of playback. Anyway Easy RealMedia Producer is really easy to use and encode all your video in batches. You can leave it on the whole night, and let the pc shutdown when its done. Happy encoding.