Hi,
I just got into video podcasting (I thoroughly recommend it).
I thought my .mp4 files to be a bit on the heavy side.
So I compared my files with a 'professional' one, and sure enough mine was much larger (based on the same amount of time).

This professional one was .m4v (and not .mp4), would this account for the large difference? Do you know what is the difference is between them?
Or maybe the way I am creating my .mp4....

I'm starting with an analog film, and convert it to digital, edit it and save it as mpeg-1. I'm using VideoStudio 8 for all this which doesn't support mpeg-4.
Then I use Super to encode as .mp4 (H.264)

Any ideas you have to help reduce the size of the files (without losing much quality) would be most welcome.
Thanks,
Simon

Come on guys....I was really counting on you....you haven't let me down yet.

The trouble is that there's so many 'legal' variations within the MPEG4 standard, that it's not sufficient to say "Podcast", ".m4v", or ".mp4" without knowing what is exactly in the AV data or what type of screen you're trying to view the AV on.

For starters, I suggest you forget MPEG1 and encode your analogue material in MPEG2, because it's a better codec and there's more choice of applications that will take the data down to MPEG4.

I use FairUse for MPEG2 -> MPEG4 for playback on an Archos AV700, as it gives you an enormous number of variations that you can choose to adapt XviD (the MPEG4 codec I prefer), to the end-display characteristics.

You should use H.263, not 264.

I was just following apple's spec. .....
http://www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts/techspecs.html

Thanks. I tried it and it actually does work (although not listed in Apple's doc).
And the file was smaller by a about 35%...

However I lose a lot of quality. I wish I knew how the professionals keep the file size so small and don't lose the quality.

E.g. see http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/M...89411&s=143444