Compressing a video?

[DandyDon]

I do need to try some of those other ideas...

But I generally stick with WMM as I do like to email videos to friends, and almost everone has Windows Media Player. When you do try compressing on WMM, here is the window where you can reduce size to compress additionally. See where I have checked the second option and set the file for 13 mb...
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[DandyDon]

Just for grins and learn what would happen, I took a dive video I shot with my Canon A540 - originally 640 wide and about 1.75 gb, which I had compressed to 90 mb still at 640 wide - and compressed it on good ol' WMM to 9.15 mb which reduced the width to 320. I think that's reducing it to 0.5% of original size, small enough to email to anyone. Low quality, but you know - not horrible.

 

[CompuDude]

Either way, when you download the vid to your computer and it's like 500 mb to 2 gb, simply open Windows Movie Maker (should be on all PCs, can be added to Macs I think, available as free download from Microsoft),

Macs can usually (but not always) play back WMV files that this produces, if they install Microsoft's free player. They cannot create them, however (without expensive pro software), and cannot play back certain newer versions of the codec. Windows Movie Maker is Windows-only... there is no Mac version.

Macs do, however, have iMovie, which can do the same thing you're trying to with QuickTime, only better and easier than WMM.

 

[PriusDrIVER]

Macs can usually (but not always) play back WMV files that this produces, if they install Microsoft's free player. They cannot create them, however (without expensive pro software), and cannot play back certain newer versions of the codec. Windows Movie Maker is Windows-only... there is no Mac version.

Macs do, however, have iMovie, which can do the same thing you're trying to with QuickTime, only better and easier than WMM.

While it is true that Apple's software won't do Windows Media File exports, you can always use something like MPEG Streamclip which is a very impressive tool for the price. It can convert between many video formats...including the proprietary .mmv Sony had produced for their MicroMV camcorders (which I was foolish enough to buy, once).

There are a lot of options out there for the Mac that are free or cheap. On the PC side, I'm not as familiar...after living in a PC world (wishing to die) for all too long (also as an IT professional) I switched to Mac, so I don't look at PC related info anymore

 

[PriusDrIVER]

Actually, MPEG Streamclip is available for Windows as well. You can likely open your movie file directly in MPEG Streamclip and export it to almost any file type you would like. Some features will require QuickTime Pro, however.