How do you reduce a video's size?

[Dr.Epic]

I just finished editing a video. It's just slightly over 15 minutes in length. I rendered and saved it and the end result is over 3 GB. It's saved as Quicktime. I need to reduce it to less than a GB so I can get it online. I edited it in Adobe Premiere Elements so if anyone has experience that can help thanks.

[Gnoman]

There's a number of ways to do so. First, you can drop the audio to mono, which will give some size benefits. Second, drop the frame rate to 25-30 fps. That will still give smooth video at a lower size. Third, go to 640x480 or 320x240 resolution. Finally, transcoding to a different format often helps a little.

[Dr.Epic]

There's a number of ways to do so. First, you can drop the audio to mono, which will give some size benefits. Second, drop the frame rate to 25-30 fps. That will still give smooth video at a lower size. Third, go to 640x480 or 320x240 resolution. Finally, transcoding to a different format often helps a little.

Okay, I'll see if I can manage to do this. I'm new to Premiere, so I'll see if I can figure out how to do this on my own, but if you or anyone else knows where to select this stuff I appreciate the advice.

[factotum]

When you export a video in Premiere it should give you a whole bunch of options as to what video codec to use...do you happen to know which one you selected?

[tassaron]

Kind of a vague question, but I have a ton of experience working with Premiere so I'll try to help as best I can.

The most important thing to do if you want to reduce a video file's size is to check the render settings (the values in the "Export" window, I mean) and determine what it is that's causing the big file size in the first place. 90% of the time you'll end up realizing that you can reduce the size with barely any change to the file's subjective quality.

Ascertain that the following things are true:
1) Your audio is compressed (ac3, mp3, etc) and not uncompressed (pcm, wav). My copy of Adobe Premiere seems to always pick the dumbest audio codec by default, so this is usually my problem. :/
2) The bitrates of both the audio and video streams are reasonable for what you're trying to do. For a web video, you don't need a video bitrate higher than 3mbps or an audio bitrate higher than maybe 192kbps. These are approximate values that depend on the codecs being used, but basically you shouldn't have a really high number like 12mbps which will inflate the crap out of your file size.
3) The framerate should be either be 25 (PAL) or 29.97 (NTSC) unless you have a specific reason to choose otherwise.

If all those are true and you still have a huge file size, you can try switching the audio stream to mono (a massive quality drop, but will help the size a lot). Worst comes to worst, you can change the frame size to be smaller, but then you're -severely- reducing the video quality.

Sorry if some of this doesn't make sense, it's 4am right now. Just trying to lend a hand before bed. Zzzzzzz

Edit: forgot to mention, if you want a codec suggestion I would recommend h.264. That one has always been reliable for me. I never use QuickTime so I can't comment on it specifically.

[Dr.Epic]

Kind of a vague question, but I have a ton of experience working with Premiere so I'll try to help as best I can.

The most important thing to do if you want to reduce a video file's size is to check the render settings (the values in the "Export" window, I mean) and determine what it is that's causing the big file size in the first place. 90% of the time you'll end up realizing that you can reduce the size with barely any change to the file's subjective quality.

Ascertain that the following things are true:
1) Your audio is compressed (ac3, mp3, etc) and not uncompressed (pcm, wav). My copy of Adobe Premiere seems to always pick the dumbest audio codec by default, so this is usually my problem. :/
2) The bitrates of both the audio and video streams are reasonable for what you're trying to do. For a web video, you don't need a video bitrate higher than 3mbps or an audio bitrate higher than maybe 192kbps. These are approximate values that depend on the codecs being used, but basically you shouldn't have a really high number like 12mbps which will inflate the crap out of your file size.
3) The framerate should be either be 25 (PAL) or 29.97 (NTSC) unless you have a specific reason to choose otherwise.

If all those are true and you still have a huge file size, you can try switching the audio stream to mono (a massive quality drop, but will help the size a lot). Worst comes to worst, you can change the frame size to be smaller, but then you're -severely- reducing the video quality.

Sorry if some of this doesn't make sense, it's 4am right now. Just trying to lend a hand before bed. Zzzzzzz

Edit: forgot to mention, if you want a codec suggestion I would recommend h.264. That one has always been reliable for me. I never use QuickTime so I can't comment on it specifically.

Nah, it's cool. I'll try and do this. Thanks. And go get some sleep.

[Jimorian]

During the export dialog, there should also be a setting for the "quality" of the compression. Since the web site is going to recompress it all again anyway for streaming, this can be set fairly low.

For 4-5 minute live music videos that I post to YouTube, I usually end up with files in the 200-300M range with 720p 30fps HD footage, so your goal of 1G sounds about right.

[Dr.Epic]

Yeah, I have no idea what the problem is. The framerate I changed to 25 and the original was 29.97. And it's still over 3 GB. I have no idea what you're talking about options appearing when I export it. I didn't get anything for that.

[Renegade Paladin]

Perhaps Premiere Elements behaves differently from the full Premiere CS5? I've never used Elements, so I can't comment on that.

[Dr.Epic]

Perhaps Premiere Elements behaves differently from the full Premiere CS5? I've never used Elements, so I can't comment on that.

I can't find any export thing. Just a Get Media option, and that doesn't come with any sort of options for editing the properties when I select it.

[Renegade Paladin]

I can't find any export thing. Just a Get Media option, and that doesn't come with any sort of options for editing the properties when I select it.
Let me fire up Premiere and see if I can get you some screenshots. I'm much more familiar with After Effects than Premiere, but we'll see what I can figure out for you.

Edit: If Elements is like Premiere Pro CS5, Export should be in the File menu, three spaces above Exit. What you want is Export > Media. The shortcut should be Ctrl+M.

Edit2: Like so: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v350/RenegadePaladin/PremiereMenu.png

[Dr.Epic]

Let me fire up Premiere and see if I can get you some screenshots. I'm much more familiar with After Effects than Premiere, but we'll see what I can figure out for you.

Edit: If Elements is like Premiere Pro CS5, Export should be in the File menu, three spaces above Exit. What you want is Export > Media. The shortcut should be Ctrl+M.

Edit2: Like so: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v350/RenegadePaladin/PremiereMenu.png

Yeah, I don't have anything like that. Also, I saw capture as a feature there. Can you capture what's happening on screen with that?

[OracleofWuffing]

Welcome to the Netherbowels that are Codecs.

For whatever it's worth, the last guy I helped through with having hugely-sized videos, part of the solution was that he would run his resulting video through a program called Zarx264gui (http://amvhell.com/stuff/zarx264gui/), which is just a program that'll take a file or two and compress it using the h.264 codec mentioned earlier.

Another trick, depending on which version of Quicktime you have installed, is to just open up the file you got from Premiere Elements in Quicktime, and use Quicktime's "Save for Web" option to get a smaller video for you.

[Renegade Paladin]

Yeah, I don't have anything like that. Also, I saw capture as a feature there. Can you capture what's happening on screen with that?
So I suppose the keyboard shortcut doesn't do anything?

And I have no idea what Capture... does. Learning to use this damn thing has been an exercise in trial and error, and I haven't tried that yet. :smalltongue: There are wonderful tutorial resources for using After Effects, but not so much for Premiere. I'm not sure why that is, but there you are.

[Dogmantra]

And I have no idea what Capture... does.

I'm pretty sure Capture is for putting your tape based recordings onto the computer rather than just dragging and dropping the files off a memory based one.

[tassaron]

Capture is for transferring digital footage from a DV tape to your hard drive. What you're talking about is a screen capture program, which Adobe doesn't make as far as I know. CamStudio (freeware) and Fraps ($35) can record the screen and create Premiere-compatible files, though, with the correct settings.

Unfortunately I've never used Premiere Elements, just Premiere Pro, so I can't help find Export Media option. Try searching the menus for "render as" or "send to render queue" or "make movie" or some other synonym.

[Dr.Epic]

Okay, I'm trying to save it under a different format. Hopefully that'll work. It said the end result would be 600 MB. So that's good. I still have no idea why the file is that big. I have video files far longer than 15 minutes that have a much smaller size. I need to get someone who knows Premiere to look at this and tell me what I'm doing wrong.