AVI file-size advice

Support Animation and Rigging
#1

Anyone know of a good (freeware, preferably) program for compressing AVIs?

I’ve done a nice 200 frame animation, but Blender’s built in AVI ability is producing an 11 meg file. I’d like to get it down to something more manageable, so I can email it to a friend and post it here.

Or maybe I’m setting it up wrong in Blender. I’ve set it to “AVI JPG”. Are any of the other format better?

#2

Set it to AVI Codec. The way I understand it, AVI is just the container, AVI JPG simply fills the container with jpgs. With AVI Codec, you can use any codec installed on your machine. I’ve used XviD with good results. If nothing is set up, you’ll get a little “pick a codec” window. If you already have a codec selected, you can change it by pressing the “Set Codec” button, which appears if you use AVI codec.

#3

I ve had this problem befor except mine came out as a Gig for about 30 secondes of AVI. the prodlem is that the qaulity is set to 90 still and it should be at about 50 unless you want to have huge files that arn’t noticablely better. the quality setting is directly under the output type.

#4

avi is just a container, it does not actually compress files. Look up ‘video codec’, that’s the thing that actually compresses movies. Popular codec includes DivX, Xvid, and the more advanced MPEG4 or X264.

#5

Personally, I like quicktime videos with either H.264 codec or mpeg4. Good filesize to quality ratio.

#6

see http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Rendering_Animations and the next page for a discussion on the options.

#7

Thanks, guys. I turned the quality down to 45 and it’s a lot smaller, but still huge and now the image is full of artifacts. I’ll look into mpeg4 or something.

#8

:smiley: I used the mpeg4 codec and the filesize went from 12.5 meg at 90 quality avi-jpeg to just over 1 meg. It’s still got compression artifacts, but not as bad as 45 quality avi-jpeg, which was over 6 meg.
I’ll experiment with some other codecs, then find a place to post it.

#9

And here it is, as promised. 1.6 meg download.

http://www.gizmology.net/animation/V-8.avi

Thanks, everyone.

#10

Glad you got it. As you have seen, jpeg down to 70 quality does not, for normal TV video, produce too many horrible artifacts, and at least halves the video size. However, xvid et al codecs can do better…but you and your viewing computer need the codec.