Re-encoding to get smaller size - Free / cheap converters
Well I've done a fair bit of reading and research into getting the file size down from the ContourHD.
To not bore with all the details H.264 / MPEG-4 aka X264 codec is really the best out there for quality and also size reduction, so to make the file smaller stick with this codec.
I've done plenty of comparisons with quality and size and nothing really matches, some comparisons were done with DivX-HD, WMV 9, etc and still H.264 comes on top...
I've then thought what would be best reduction size / quality I can go.
I did some testes with HD rips of movies and found most are in the range of 1minute = 20mb - 24mb (bar one that was 39mb)
The ContourHD (in HD mode) does around 34 mb/min (variable)
SO with my testing I found to set an average bit rate around 3200 -350 is keeping the quality in reducing the file size.
E.g. a 185MB file becomes around 114MB file (with keeping same audio)
Now onto the converters.
I tested a fair few, and was only interested in cheap or free ones. There are plenty out there.
The key factors which you need to look for is multipass encoding, this helps get great quality with smaller files.
for H.264 codec, look for B frame support, this looks forward (x amount of frames, usually selectable, use 3-5, and also back frames if they are the same it can dropped these frames and use it reducing file size with no loss of quality).
Also CABAC, which is in short best option for conversion
The Container, is probably not too important.
Keep to Mov, MKV, MP4, AVI*
I prefer MKV, as it support almost any video format out there, AVI is not too bad but can have issues having a H.264 encoded file, although through an updated x264/ffdshow filter it is possible to view without problems (usually codec packs will fix this issue)
Mov container is limited to QuickTime codec manager, so if you encode it with another codec, and it doesn't play, change it to MKV or MP4.
Super Media Converter.
Has B Frames support
Has CABAC option
Doesn't have multi pass (Single Pass only)
Note: Although single pass only, still produces a great result
Handbrake
Has B Frames support
Has CABAC option
Has multi pass
Note: current version 0.9.3 has issues with converting the audio (AAC) so they have a pre release svn2845 which sorts out the audio issue but limits to saving to a MKV or MP4 container.
AviDemux 2.5.1
Doesn't have B Frames support
Has CABAC option
Has multi pass
Note: asks to convert to iFrames or can leave as is, if left file usually comes put corrupted / doesn't work) Changing to iFrames is no issue but not as good for encoding due the info mentioned about B Frames above.
Any Video Converter
Has B Frames support
Has CABAC option
Doesn't have multi pass (Single Pass only)
AVS Video Converter 6.3
Doesn't have B Frames support
Doesn't have CABAC option
Has multi pass (Single Pass only)
Note. Although it will take almost any file, it won't let you save to a MKV container, and won't let you use H.264 / X264 video format, thus no CABAC and B frames.
My Preferred one is Hand Brake, and if AviDemux handled Bframes I'd probably go with this.
Audio:
I didn't go into this much, where you can I left at Streaming (i.e. no re-encoding) as the file from the cam is AAC, 48 KHz, 16 Bits 2 channels (mono still) 64 kb/s and makes up about 1% of the whole file size
Well I've done a fair bit of reading and research into getting the file size down from the ContourHD.
To not bore with all the details H.264 / MPEG-4 aka X264 codec is really the best out there for quality and also size reduction, so to make the file smaller stick with this codec.
I've done plenty of comparisons with quality and size and nothing really matches, some comparisons were done with DivX-HD, WMV 9, etc and still H.264 comes on top...
I've then thought what would be best reduction size / quality I can go.
I did some testes with HD rips of movies and found most are in the range of 1minute = 20mb - 24mb (bar one that was 39mb)
The ContourHD (in HD mode) does around 34 mb/min (variable)
SO with my testing I found to set an average bit rate around 3200 -350 is keeping the quality in reducing the file size.
E.g. a 185MB file becomes around 114MB file (with keeping same audio)
Now onto the converters.
I tested a fair few, and was only interested in cheap or free ones. There are plenty out there.
The key factors which you need to look for is multipass encoding, this helps get great quality with smaller files.
for H.264 codec, look for B frame support, this looks forward (x amount of frames, usually selectable, use 3-5, and also back frames if they are the same it can dropped these frames and use it reducing file size with no loss of quality).
Also CABAC, which is in short best option for conversion
The Container, is probably not too important.
Keep to Mov, MKV, MP4, AVI*
I prefer MKV, as it support almost any video format out there, AVI is not too bad but can have issues having a H.264 encoded file, although through an updated x264/ffdshow filter it is possible to view without problems (usually codec packs will fix this issue)
Mov container is limited to QuickTime codec manager, so if you encode it with another codec, and it doesn't play, change it to MKV or MP4.
Super Media Converter.
Has B Frames support
Has CABAC option
Doesn't have multi pass (Single Pass only)
Note: Although single pass only, still produces a great result
Handbrake
Has B Frames support
Has CABAC option
Has multi pass
Note: current version 0.9.3 has issues with converting the audio (AAC) so they have a pre release svn2845 which sorts out the audio issue but limits to saving to a MKV or MP4 container.
AviDemux 2.5.1
Doesn't have B Frames support
Has CABAC option
Has multi pass
Note: asks to convert to iFrames or can leave as is, if left file usually comes put corrupted / doesn't work) Changing to iFrames is no issue but not as good for encoding due the info mentioned about B Frames above.
Any Video Converter
Has B Frames support
Has CABAC option
Doesn't have multi pass (Single Pass only)
AVS Video Converter 6.3
Doesn't have B Frames support
Doesn't have CABAC option
Has multi pass (Single Pass only)
Note. Although it will take almost any file, it won't let you save to a MKV container, and won't let you use H.264 / X264 video format, thus no CABAC and B frames.
My Preferred one is Hand Brake, and if AviDemux handled Bframes I'd probably go with this.
Audio:
I didn't go into this much, where you can I left at Streaming (i.e. no re-encoding) as the file from the cam is AAC, 48 KHz, 16 Bits 2 channels (mono still) 64 kb/s and makes up about 1% of the whole file size
Ref:
List of Codecs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Comparison of Container Formats
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
CABAC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...