When converting video files, best options to use?
 

I have a bunch of 250-300 MB mpegs, and want to convert them to WMV to save space and bandwidth. Im not sure what to use windows media encoder or cleaner XL?

But the main question is which setting shod I use? Im not that experienced with this, and there is a lot of combination available:
kbps, frame rate, video size, smoothness...

Which settings are u using when converting to wmv?

Any knowledgeable people online?

ALSO please help me with this issue I have with cleaner XL:
during the encoding somewhere in the middle of the process it freezes, I don't get any error messages or anything it just hangs there still using 100% of my processor power...just don't tell me it the memory? I have 512 mb ram, 2.4 ghz.

I mean to keep decent quality and lose as much of the file size as possible.

When it hits the 100% processor use, it's just working. You've got a slow processor, it isn't "frozen", it's working. Leave it for a couple hours. Make sure you have nothing else running when you're trying to encode.

As for the WMV, use their templates and tweak them to whatever you want to accomplish. Trial and error.

windows encoder its free and very good

to just use their template is not an bad idea after all, but the thing is that I edited 512k template and changed "kbps" numbers. And I don't remember what was the original numbers :upsidedow and I can't find a reset button :Oh crap

If you have cleaner xl, can you tell me "kbps" for the 512k template? :)

btw..thanks for the post, I'll try to leave it for 5-6 hours...I used to stop it after 1-2 hours...

It is also the fastest "the encoding part"...but it takes long time to prepare a video for encoding, I mean every function I click on the PC freezes for about 30 seconds before it lets me click on something else in the program...I don't know maybe my pc is to slow... :(

I'd lower the frame rate to 15/s and quality to somewhere around 500-700 kbps, depending on how good the mpeg quality is and whether there is much movement in the scenes

sounds interesting ill try that :upsidedow

I never recommend converting from one compressed end user format to another like from mpeg to wmv. I always start with DV AVI video with original content. You can always try windows media encoder which works well to convert to wmv.

If you prefer to use Cleaner XL, it works slow even on a fast system.(I use a 2.6 Ghz P4) Try to encode one small video file to make sure that the app isn't corrupted and locking up. If it is re-install the program. Make sure that your Windows system is updated and not having any errors in general. Turn everything off that is running in the background when you encode. I use all custom presets. You have to decide what sizes and settings that you want depending on how big you want these, one common size would be size 320 x 240, WM Video Codec 8, WM audio codec 9, constant bit rate mode and a 700 kbs video setting for example, I find to be a decent trade off in quality and file size. I woudn't lower the frame rates unles you really want to make these things very small.

I'm using a 3.6 P4 (Deemed P5 by Asus) overclocked with Auto Overclocking, and benchmarked against a 2.4 GHz P4, it outperformed it by nearly 100%. The difference really is amazing. A 15 minute clip took over 2 hours to encode on the 2.4 and only 46 minutes on the 3.6. (Both tests used the same clip and both used Cleaner XL and the same template).