reducing the size of mp4 files without quality loss HELP!

[atarigraffx]

i have alot of large Mp4 files i coverted awhile back taking up way to much space on my HD. my question is if anyone has amazing settings they use to convert to mp4 without losing to much video quality/ too much artifacts. i would like to go from an average size of 2.5 gbs to around 700 mb and keep relatively good quality still.

i use handbrake of toast or if you guys have any suggestions thanks

 

[jackerin]

my question is if anyone has amazing settings they use to convert to mp4 without losing to much video quality/ too much artifacts. i would like to go from an average size of 2.5 gbs to around 700 mb and keep relatively good quality still.

2.5GB to 700MB will most likely see some loss, maybe a lot of loss, depending on resolution.

There are no magic settings or a secret "pro-quality" button that I know of, so my advice is to set encoder to two-pass with target size 700MB and play around with it. Calculating the bitrate and encoding short samples will give you somewhat of an idea if you don't want to encode the whole file multiple times.

 

[matteusclement]

what do you want to play this back on?
tv
ipod
phone
laptop

 

[atarigraffx]

what do you want to play this back on?
tv
ipod
phone
laptop

tv or computer monitor

i dont use a television but sometimes i like to bring a movie over a friends house and they usually have a tv

 

[matteusclement]

i've always been happy with the APPLE TV settings.

 

[ChrisA]

i have alot of large Mp4 files i coverted awhile back taking up way to much space on my HD. my question is if anyone has amazing settings they use to convert to mp4 without losing to much video quality/ too much artifacts. i would like to go from an average size of 2.5 gbs to around 700 mb and keep relatively good quality still.

i use handbrake of toast or if you guys have any suggestions thanks

One Terabyte drives sell for $100. That's 10 cents per GB. Reducing the size of the video will save you 17 cents and cause the video to look blocky and not smooth.

Ok one more angle. Why not simply delete them all? If I had a 700MB full length movie I'd never watch it because of the poor quality. Why keep stuff you will never use? Quicker to just delete it.

Seriously your best option is to buy a 1Tb disk.

 

[matteusclement]

bigger drive obviously.

duh.
Ya.. what he said.
If you like your movies that much, just opt for a bigger drive if you can.
I have all my movies stored on a larger external drive.

any reason you can't?

 

[atarigraffx]

i be of the poor art student variety, actually working on my 3d animated short film and have a ton maya files i dont have backed up and its freaking me out. time machine stopped working for some reason, i think when i moved my itunes library to a larger drive it got wonky. but mostly need to backup files from my portable drive i take to school but aint got space on the home HD's and right now i can barely afford to pay rent at the same time. darn it. i was just trying to be slick and add a little space with the compressing of the movies but i cant seem to get the right settings to do achieve the results i want.