Compressing movie files and they still look good?

TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
edited April 2008 in Science & Tech
I was wondering about how DVD movies are compressed and maintain good quality. Someone I know (;)) gets movies from LimeWire now and then. They are almost always right about 700 MB in file size. Some of them are 1-1/2 hours long, one or 2 go over 2-1/2 hours. Yet they still maintain some pretty darn good video and sound quality. They claim to be DVD quality, but I think that's simply not possible, as 700 MB will fit on a CD.

So I'm wondering how they get compressed so much and still look good, I think a lot of them use the DivX codec.

Comments

  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited April 2008
    They are just compressed using divx(or equiv) mp4 compression. No real magic there. The quality is only comparable to the original DVD depending on the equipment you are playing it back on. The better the equipment the bigger the difference in the two versions.

    Also consider that when things are compressed like that it's not only the sound but often the audio that gets chopped as well.

    Additionally if you are looking at DVD content usually when you are stripping a DVD movie to fit onto a cd you are getting rid of all that extra content as well and just getting the bare movie.

    So usually not a case of 4gb of Movie being compressed into 700mb.
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