Video - what format

50Twuncle

I have a number of MP4 videos that I am trying to reduce in size - using Format Factory - whatever format I try - the file size appears to increase - unless I reduce the quality of the output
Which should be the smallest file ?
FLV, MOV or MPG ?

NiftyDigits

FLV. For what reason do you wish to reduce the size?

-TangleFoot-

21Twinkle wrote: »

Which should be the smallest file ?

It's hard to tell from just the file extension...

paddyrg

You are opening a whole can of worms - gets very technical from here! Are you ready?

The container format (flv, mp4, mov, etc) is less important than the codec used inside it. Different containers can contain different codec-encoded streams. Each codec suits different things, and have different levels of compression (smallness of resulting files).

For viewing purposes (as opposed to archive, editing, etc) you will probably find h.264 (aka MPEG4v10) the best compression format. You could also consider using the webm container format with VP8 or VP9 if available in your software.

You need to turn the compression up, quality down, image size down and allow the computer to take *hours* to recompress the video - then you can get reasonable quality at a small filesize.

Avoriaz

21Twinkle wrote: »

I have a number of MP4 videos that I am trying to reduce in size - using Format Factory - whatever format I try - the file size appears to increase - unless I reduce the quality of the output
Which should be the smallest file ?
FLV, MOV or MPG ?

Why do you want to reduce the file size?

You will inevitably end up with poorer picture and audio quality.

Storage is cheap and even large files are quite easy to distribute via broadband.