Best video compression

[size13]

Whats the best video compression to use if capturing off a DV camcorder to use on the net, and be most accepted?

I guess WMV is pretty good, but Movie maker keeps crashing on my computer.

MPEG seems to lose a lot of quality to make the file small enough.

www.rcraig.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/pictures/phantom1.avi
is the best I could get as an avi. it's 3.9MB

Ta

Size13

[chrisjl]

size13 said:

www.rcraig.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/pictures/phantom1.avi is the best I could get as an avi. it's 3.9MB

avi is just a specification for a container for audio and video data, and doesn't specify the compression used. That .avi you've produced possibly isn't even using ANY compression (and seems to be at less that 25fps?).
MPEG-4 is the way to go for compression/quality, but unfortunately it's a bit young. There are various implementations supporting a different subset of the spec (and of course the Microsoft one breaks the spec):-
DivX - click the DivX tab at the top of their front page, then scroll down to "Standard DivX codec (FREE)"
XviD - split off from DivX when DivX went commercial - pre-compiled version available here
Apple - Quicktime now does MPEG-4
Microsoft - typically provide their own "interpretation" of a standard spec

For your visitors convenience, I reluctantly have to say .wmv might be the way to go, with DivX and Quicktime tied for second place (in terms of likelihood of being playable without installing anything)

As for file sizes - you should be able to get your 30s clip into 1MB at that res (300x240) at full 25fps, with no noticable quality drop.

[size13]

Thanks, my video camera itself will output as an mpeg, but I can't change any setting. That small clip came out at 4MB but with sound, although I didn't think the video was any better.

I'll carry on playing around.