Video downsizing / conversion software?

[metalprof]

Yes, I am badly behind the times technologically.

The video camera we have at home records onto those tiny cassettes. I am successful at downloading the video from the camera / cassette, and they arrive on my hard drive as HUGE avi files, hundreds of megabytes in size.

I would like to be able to convert them to something else (.wav perhaps?) that is of lower resolution and much lower file size, for either burning onto CD or porting to another computer where I can burn them onto a DVD. (My computer at work has a DVD burner in it, so if I can get the files there, I can make DVDs. But I can't install a firewire port on my computer at work to put them there directly from the camera.)

Any suggestions?

Ken

 

[Jibrille]

What time length are we talking about? 100s of megabytes isn't that bad if you're talking about an hour long video. .wav is an audio file so I think you mean .wmv - I personally don't like that file format. There's .avi but that really means little as there's a ton of different encoding formats that all are .avi.
Try Video Converter maybe. The better file formats usually require certain codecs to be installed on your computer. You can get by that with just downloading something like Zoom Player.

 

[J-Dubya 777]

ConvertXto DVD....

http://www.vso-software.fr/shop.php?ap=avangate&aid=2310&afs=c114

 

[metalprof]

What time length are we talking about? 100s of megabytes isn't that bad if you're talking about an hour long video. .wav is an audio file so I think you mean .wmv - I personally don't like that file format. There's .avi but that really means little as there's a ton of different encoding formats that all are .avi.
Try Video Converter maybe. The better file formats usually require certain codecs to be installed on your computer. You can get by that with just downloading something like Zoom Player.

Thanks for the info. The 100's of MB is just for each segment; I get a separate dated and timed file for each few minutes of recording, between start / stops. Once I downloaded 2-3 hour long cassettes of video, I was up to a few GB of total memory, making these things not portable at all yet.

Cheers,

Ken

 

[wayjoy]

If you have the H.264 codec for quicktime I would go that route. You don't lose much quality and its a fraction the size of the original file.

 

[Magius]

Windows Movie Maker will also downsize your files, and you should already have it on your PC.

 

[nailz]

Uh... divx.

 

[Diamond45]

Uh... divx.

Or the freeware version - Xvid.

 

[nailz]

Divx codec is free. You just have to have a program that'll convert, and there are several. I do, however, enjoy xvid.