frustrated with compression, need help.

[flyhigh]

I am trying to get a movie video file down to a size that i can fit onto a cf card. I am starting with a divx avi file of 700Mb. I have followed the guide on this site TO THE LETTER and every time, I wind up with a file size of around 600Mb. Its the right direction but far from what I hear people are able to do. When I do the first pass, the file is around 400Mb but the second brings it up to that 600! I am new at this but I feel that I have a good grasp of the concept. I must be missing something. any ideas? how are you people getting your movies into such small file sizes? does my intital file type (source) have anything to do with it? Please help.

[Michael Y]

Are you using MP3 compression? I've found that it's often the audio that jacks up the filesize. Or possibly you're not using DivX?

[Guest]

[Michael Y]

[James S]

[flyhigh]

Ok, I think im getting closer to a solution but........Under audio compression, when i choose mpeg layer 3, even with the "show all" box checked, i get NO options in the window on the right for audio hz, mono...some of the other options on the left besides mp3 do bring up options on the right however. why can't i get that list on the right for mpeg layer 3? I think if i could do that, i'll be able to compress a movie file to less then 600Mb. I hope!

[flyhigh]

OK. here's the deal. I tried using a different source file, and I was able to get the list on the right for mp3's. I thought maybe the original file was corupted or something, but when i tried it again, it worked. It seems like it may or may not work on certain files at certain times. maybe its a bug in VirtualDub, because i found other people in other forums with the same problem who were ok after reinstalling virtualdub. Anyway, thanks to all your help, problem sovled and i got a nice quality movie at 200mb all set to go if only my Axim would get here already.

[damian]