Enormous File Size

[pollian]

I recently imported my first video into iMovie HD, and everything went well--except that my file size seems to be inordinately large. The video was 50 seconds long and the file was over 500 megs. Is that right? Would an hour of footage really require 30 Gigs?

pollian

[Karel]

Yes it is huge. According to a document I found on the Apple website, using the Apple Intermediate codec will take about 42GB/hr with 1080i50 and 49GB/hr with 1080i60.
See:http://www.apple.com/support/finalcutpro/; In the right sidebar is a pdf document called "HD and broadcast formats" and have a look on page 37

[plnelson]

I recently imported my first video into iMovie HD, and everything went well--except that my file size seems to be inordinately large. The video was 50 seconds long and the file was over 500 megs. Is that right? Would an hour of footage really require 30 Gigs?

pollian

Depending on your settings you might be able to get it down smaller - say to 15G - but at the expense of quality. Bottom line - video files, especially HD, are HUGE.

[bluegrass]

I recently imported my first video into iMovie HD, and everything went well--except that my file size seems to be inordinately large. The video was 50 seconds long and the file was over 500 megs. Is that right? Would an hour of footage really require 30 Gigs?

pollian

I can only give you the stats from my PC setup using Studio 10.7. My last tape capture was 53 minutes and 40 seconds long and took up 9,837,477 bytes on my hard disk. My program gives the file and m2v extension which as I understand it, is an mpeg2 format. I'm of the believe that this is HDV quality 1440 X 1080. I believe this is the highest quality you can capture from an HDV recorded tape.

You can do the math, but I believe this is a smaller file size per minute than the files your capturing on your Mac. I'm not sure why. I'll be honest, I am a bit confused as to why my capture folder always contain two wav files in addition to the m2v file. One time I deleted the wav files and only kept the m2v file and found out that when I rendered my clip there wasn't any audio. Apparently, at least for Pinnacle, capturing HDV files creates a separate audio file for some reason. When I used Pinnacle to capture SD files with my previous cameras, the audio was interlaced or embeded with the video and not separate.

[mik]

the apple intermediate codec is a trick so that mac users could edit video seemingly faster and that also comes with a few problems.

this is not a lossless operation anyway. the apple codec is frame based, not long gop anymore. this means you'll need a lot less cpu power to cut video (it cuts anywhere and doesn't need operations like for hdv which has many pictures per frame. it also creates about 4x larger files. that's why mac people struggle with huge files and report qulity problems not knowing the hdv to apple intermediate conversion already altered the video quality.

[bigjohn1961]

I suggest you find a program that can edit HDV with Smart Rendering, because in basic it's an mpeg2 file anyway so there is no need to convert it first, because there's no quicker way to render then to just render what has to be rendered.:hv20-smilie110::hv20-smilie110:

[ronnylov]

Is there any list of programs which has the option of HDV smart rendering?
I have not seen many options for that other than maybe it is possible with VideoRedo Plus (however I am a PC user and iMovie is for MAC I think).

[Sherb]

Womble on PC
MPEG Streamclip on PC or Mac

[jclightman]

In regards to different people having different results in file size, does this make sense? Maybe it has to do with the I frames and such. I don't understand it completely, but it seems that depending on what is going on with the frames before and after the I frames could result in different sizes. When I take the same length of footage and export, the more cuts/transitions I've made seem to result in a larger file output. It seems that the more I just leave the initial footage alone, the smaller it is...the more I do to it, the bigger. I know that the export/render of HDV is actually having to reproduce new I frames and such. Anyway, maybe that's the reason???? Just a guess.