Video Compression tips

[Heavy351]

I have a new miniDV camcorder and have been able to capture video to my PC and burn video discs with no trouble.

What software are you guys using for video compression for the net? I downloaded Mensrea's burnout video, a neat 3.5 MB for 20 seconds and nice quality. I just want to save some video to my PC and possibly post (the avi's are up to 4 Gigs!) I see that this is a Mpeg file and I am sure it must have started as an AVI file from his camcorder. I am seeing MPEG1, MPEG2 and other formats in my online searches video codecs,

any suggestions? I don't want to reinvent the wheel

[Logan]

One of the best formats to convert video to is Windows Media Format (.WMV)... It by far and away has the best compression ratio to quality factor. I can take a 10mb mpeg and convert it to a 500k WMV with almost no loss in quality.

I use Windows Movie Maker in Windows XP to convert my video.

[Heavy351]

I am assuming this is an add on the the windows media player I already have. I am reading that Win movie maker is only for XP (I have 2000) Should I be looking for something to add on to my media player 9?

[Fourth Horseman]

Personally, I'm having really good success with the MPEG-4 CODEC supplied with QuickTime (http://quicktime.apple.com).

For the best in cross-platform compatibility, though, you might want to consider sticking with a flat MPEG-1 file.