Question About Video Size And Quality

[Edwardo Piet]

I recently installed OBS to record videos for a 'let's play' type of thing... only without my microphone. I should say a 'playthrough' really. Anyway, me playing a game.

I want to upload it to YouTube but my internet is so crappy that with the HD video quality it seems like it would take forever.

Is there a way to reduce the size drastically without losing huge amounts of quality?

May sound like a silly question: But I know there is something like that for audio. FLACs have all the audio quality of wavs but they are way, way, smaller in file size.

So I was wondering if there was a video equivalent to FLACs.

[Angrboda]

I recently installed OBS to record videos for a 'let's play' type of thing... only without my microphone. I should say a 'playthrough' really. Anyway, me playing a game.

I want to upload it to YouTube but my internet is so crappy that with the HD video quality it seems like it would take forever.

Is there a way to reduce the size drastically without losing huge amounts of quality?

May sound like a silly question: But I know there is something like that for audio. FLACs have all the audio quality of wavs but they are way, way, smaller in file size.

So I was wondering if there was a video equivalent to FLACs.

Assuming you are recording to a standard format, there are many programs which can downconvert to a lower resolution (or same resolution with less detail). However, what you ask, is there a video equivalent of FLAC, I don't believe there is. FLAC uses lossless compression which is a method of compressing the information in an audio stream into a smaller representation which contains the same information as the original. More or less by definition, video compression is lossy. However, with a good compression program, the visible quality may be well preserved while still realizing a space savings. I use format factory for translating between formats, which you could use, but I don't know how it compares in terms of the relative quality of the compression. That's not a feature which attracts much attention in reviews, so I imagine it's a crap shoot. You'd just have to experiment and see whether the quality / size trade-off was suitable for your needs.

[ignoramus]

hammy look for open source video converters... lots of good free ones.

[The Industrial Atheist]

There are newer video formats which can give you decent quality at a much smaller bitrate, and thus much smaller file size. I had a decent quality video convertor that could do this before I lost it to a system restore. It can however, take a very very long time to convert to these formats. I wish I could remember what formats but it's been a very long time since I've done this.

[Angrboda]

It's really kind of pointless as youtube will compress your uploaded video anyway, but....

[Edwardo Piet]

I recently installed OBS to record videos for a 'let's play' type of thing... only without my microphone. I should say a 'playthrough' really. Anyway, me playing a game.

I want to upload it to YouTube but my internet is so crappy that with the HD video quality it seems like it would take forever.

Is there a way to reduce the size drastically without losing huge amounts of quality?

May sound like a silly question: But I know there is something like that for audio. FLACs have all the audio quality of wavs but they are way, way, smaller in file size.

So I was wondering if there was a video equivalent to FLACs.

Assuming you are recording to a standard format, there are many programs which can downconvert to a lower resolution (or same resolution with less detail).  However, what you ask, is there a video equivalent of FLAC, I don't believe there is.  FLAC uses lossless compression which is a method of compressing the information in an audio stream into a smaller representation which contains the same information as the original.  More or less by definition, video compression is lossy.  However, with a good compression program, the visible quality may be well preserved while still realizing a space savings.  I use format factory for translating between formats, which you could use, but I don't know how it compares in terms of the relative quality of the compression.  That's not a feature which attracts much attention in reviews, so I imagine it's a crap shoot.  You'd just have to experiment and see whether the quality / size trade-off was suitable for your needs.

Thank you Jor. Do you know of any free audio compression programs that are any good?

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It's really kind of pointless as youtube will compress your uploaded video anyway, but....

Hmm. True. I don't need high video quality though. I'd be happy with fucking 240p (but no lower) but my internet is slow so I feel like converting from high quality to 240p would take forever. Or does it not work like that? Does it take longer to compress further?

I don't need particularly good quality, juts quality enough to see what is being done. 240p may be a bit blurry at some parts, for the game I wanna record. So maybe 320 or 480 is required, but I definitely don't need 720 and certainly not high definition or anything.

[Angrboda]

Thank you Jor. Do you know of any free audio compression programs that are any good?

Audio compression? I thought you wanted video compression? For audio compression, it depends on what you are trying to achieve. If you're going for lossless, FLAC or Microsoft's lossless format are probably best as they are the most widely supported. If you're looking for lossy audio compression, the lame plugin is the most commonly used one (it can be had at hydrogen audio). Lame requires a shell or invocation at the command line. Since I prefer a shell, I use the compression IDE provided with Monkey lossless codec.

For video compression, I use format factory, but largely because it's the first one I came across which did what I need (it will convert between many different formats, though I don't know if it supports x.264 encodings or matroska). I haven't really compared any programs for which are better and which are worse.

[Edwardo Piet]

Sorry I meant video lol.

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For video compression, I use format factory, but largely because it's the first one I came across which did what I need (it will convert between many different formats, though I don't know if it supports x.264 encodings or matroska).  I haven't really compared any programs for which are better and which are worse.

Thanks Jor! I'll give that one a go anyway.