Hi, I have an divx video (avi) which is about 740 MB and obviously doesn't fit in a 700MB cd. I'm wondering if there is a way to make the video smaller, or to compress the file somehow.
what do you recommend? how should I burn this file?

TIA

You might try larger CD-R's, or cutting out credits.

However, If it is still too large, pick out a few scenes which are either not important or easily compressable, and re-encode and re-mux the files (I'm assuming you know how to do this).

not at all

but can you tell me what program I should be using for this?
if I understand it right, you are saying that it's possible to only compress a little part of the movie?

also where do they sell cds that are bigger than 700mb?

Is it a divX file from kazaa or something? Try cutting out the credits of the movie with VirtualDub.

I doubt you would shave 40MB's off with the credits, especially if they were encoded at a lower bitrate.

You could also burn it to a regular 80min CDR using mode2cdmaker. However this is not recommended for an AVI. You could however remux it into a different container format like OGM.

You might be one of the lucky ones, who's CD burner supports the larger capacity CD-R's.

You can check out this site to see if yours does:-

http://www.disc4you.de/news/99min.html

It's not the most upto date site, and you will have to scroll down the page a bit until you get to the drive list. But you might be lucky..........

You could just take a chance and buy (or borrow) 90min or 99min CD-R media.

However, before you start burning, load your blank CD-R into your CD burner and use Nero's InfoTool (v1.03.3), If you select the correct options you will be see if you CD burner supports larger capacity CD-R's.

I have obtianed good results using 99min CD-R's from 'Infiniti' (available from mediainternational.com).

Infact, as recently as yesterday I burned a 744MB DivX file onto this media, using Nero (v5.5.10.28).

Curiously, while using Nero's 'wizard' option, I forgot about setting up the software for over burning. I thought I was going to end up with another fancy beer matt, but the disc burned fine............ maybe somebody could explain this one?

one could also demux the audio, and encode it at a lower bitrate, then mux the audio back in, then cut the credits.....
might get you closer to 700 (ish) MB's

what;s this "mux" thing you're talking about? hehe

ok I got virtualdub. I can cut something out, but this thing wants to start decoding/encoding it again. Isn't there a way to leave the movie compression the way it is and just cut some part out?

right now I'm cutting a peice and if I want to save it, it says that it would be saved in avi1 format (something like that? without compression). and if I choose a divx compression or something else, it would start compressing the whole thing again.
isnt' there a way not to aviod this?

Make sure that the video is set to direct streaming.

The latest version of VirtualDub (1.1.5) can do this without re-encoding the video. Choose Video->Direct Stream Copy and same ith Audio.

Already said that.

Audio is set to direct streaming by default. All versions have that option, well at least since v1.2a.

yeah I'de tried it before. so I guess it's only with this one that it doesnt work. It gave me an error saying that it doesnt have the original codec (something like that, I cant remember). anyways I was decoding it again with divx 5.0.5 and in the middle (like 50% done) it gave my an error and it stopped. Now the stupid thing is that I dont remember the error

anyways if I want to re-encode somehting, what is a good codec? divx is good, which mode of it should I choose? the new one had 4 different modes I think.

edit: when I tried to open another file with virtualdub, it gives me this error when it's loading it: "MPEG Import Filter: packet sync error on packet stream(18d...." corrupt file?

Well that error is about opening a corrupt MPG somewhat different than opening an AVI.

I can play it without errors though, heh
anyways one more question. I know it doesnt have that much to do with burning a cd anymore, but still..... If I have a file that's already encoded with divx, would I loose a lot of quality if I encode it again with virtual dub ?(I just want to choose a higher compression to make the file smaller).