I've just finished creating my first HL vid, but it's 1.6 gig now! It's in .avi format and is 7:36 long. Does anyone know how to reduce the file size so I can upload it?

how the fuck is it 1.6gigs yet only 7mins?

I saved it in .avi format, which apparently is a higher quality file format. With a little help from a couple of movie makers here, I got it figured out. Hopefully I'll get it posted before the sun comes up.

yeah but, 2 hour movies I download in .avi format are usually at the most 2 gigs

I wish I knew the answer to these questions, but alas, I do not. But I'm learning. I think the reason is that the video file I downloaded was of high quality to begin with. After I added all of the editing effects (transitions, slow motion scenes, music, etc.) I gues all of that added more to it. To top it off, I saved it in the highest quality format, and presto chango, I ended up with a 1.6 gig vid.

What I learned was that when I saved my finished product, I had to save it in a lower quality format. I saved it in MPEG-4 and it ended up being 128 meg. I think I'll try saving it in different formats next and see what happens.

That is all I know so far, 'cause I'm learnng the hard way...trial and error, with a little help from some fine folks.

Go to this website... it has guides for everything. You basically need to encode the video to a compressed codec like DivX or xvid.. Hell... even WMV. Guess I cant post links yet...

its www*doom9*org

minus the *

Go to this website... it has guides for everything. You basically need to encode the video to a compressed codec like DivX or xvid.. Hell... even WMV. Guess I cant post links yet...

its www*doom9*org

minus the *
Thanks, I'll check it out.

That's because the video is uncompressed. You need to compress it with a video and sound codec. Like Xvid for video and mp3 for the sound.

That's because the video is uncompressed. You need to compress it with a video and sound codec. Like Xvid for video and mp3 for the sound.
I will check this out. Once this is done, I'm guessing it will be able to be uploaded in this compressed form to Google Video or Daily Motion?

http://www.erightsoft.net/SUPER.html

use that video encoder..you can convert any file to most outputs and compress using xvid or divx or many others...you can pick the output quality choose which type of audio compression you want as well.

oh yea, it's also free!

check out virtualdub for all your video resizing/compression needs... http://www.virtualdub.org

if you want to make an mpeg or mpeg2 instead, try tmpgenc... http://www.tmpgenc.net

Thanks to all for your expert advise. I was able to reduce the file size and get it uploaded.