Play TV file compression help

[stiggygonzalez]

Hi,I have some Play TV recordings on my PS3's HDD and I'm looking to compress them because the files are a little bloated,one file which is 90 minutes long is almost 4GB in mpeg-2 format.
I would like to know what the best format is to convert my filesin at DVD quality and what takes the least data,so I can put them back on my system and save space.

 

[Danoff]

Hi,I have some Play TV recordings on my PS3's HDD and I'm looking to compress them because the files are a little bloated,one file which is 90 minutes long is almost 4GB in mpeg-2 format.
I would like to know what the best format is to convert my filesin at DVD quality and what takes the least data,so I can put them back on my system and save space.

What you have now is basically DVD quality. Compress it and you'll be below DVD quality.

 

[stiggygonzalez]

Really?
Can't the file size be made smaller and retain quality?

 

[Danoff]

Really?
Can't the file size be made smaller and retain quality?

Not DVD quality. The file size can be smaller and retain some quality. You can probably compress to roughly 1gb before it starts to just look absolutely horrific. I'm not sure what compression software to tell you to use, I tend to avoid this kind of exercise as hard disk space is cheap and quality is nice.

 

[stiggygonzalez]

I use this: http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/ but I'm not sure which format to use.
If I can compress by,say between 25-50% file size,without too much quality loss that would be good.

 

[Danoff]

I use this: http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/ but I'm not sure which format to use.
If I can compress by,say between 25-50% file size,without too much quality loss that would be good.

Try some and see what you think. Ultimately it comes down to your eye. You know best what threshold you're looking for. Probably H.264 mpeg-4. Back off on the quality until it starts to become irritating to you.

 

[TB]

A 40Gb video file can be compressed to about 5Gb without too much trouble so I don't think you'll have too much trouble dropping a bit from that file, especially if it's an MPEG-2. As @Danoff said, go with an H.264 MP4 and play with the quality. Instead of doing the entire thing, do a few minutes and see how it looks. There's nothing worse than setting it up, running the conversion for an hour and not liking how it turned out.

 

[Grayfox]

I can take a 40GB bluray down to 4GB, I use Ripbot to get it down.
I normally have a bitrate of 6Mbps.

 

[Danoff]

I can take a 40GB bluray down to 4GB, I use Ripbot to get it down.

That has to look awful.

 

[Grayfox]

That has to look awful.

Not really, it also depends on the movie length.