How do I convert my large AVIs to MPEG1 files?
The use of AVI files presents a number of cross platform problems.
First, uncompressed AVIs are VERY large. They require a great deal of storage space, and even on a local area network, take a while to download.
Second, compressed AVIs require that every system used to view the AVI have a copy of the codec used to compress the AVI installed. In a large organization, with different IT groups responsible for different lab configurations, this can be rather unwieldy.
To work around these two problems, you can convert your video material to MPEG level 1 video files. MPEG1 encoders come in a variety of prices. The one we will be using today is free. John Schlichther has created a number of very useful utilities including avi2vcd. We will be using the AVI2VCD application to compress our large AVIs.
1. Download the avi2vcd application and extract it to a unzip it.
2. Now launch the application by clicking on avi2vcd.exe
3. Click the browse button.
4. Select the AVI you wish to compress.
5. Now it is time to check some of our settings. Choose NTSC or PAL as appropriate. If you have a PAL video, and wish to convert it to NTSC, we will cover this in another tutorial.
6. Click the encode button and sit back and wait.
7. Our example AVI was 92 megabytes in size. After we converted it to a mpeg file, it was less than 4 megabytes.
