How did you calculate that figure? I would have thought that a 4hr 1920x1080 25fps H264 (for example) would be coming out around the 40GB mark. PDR has, in the past, been said to be very bad at estimating final file size, have you actually tried producing your file and then compared the estimate with reality.

Quote How did you calculate that figure? I would have thought that a 4hr 1920x1080 25fps H264 (for example) would be coming out around the 40GB mark. PDR has, in the past, been said to be very bad at estimating final file size, have you actually tried producing your file and then compared the estimate with reality.

Thanks much for chiming in, Longedge. I recorded the orginal file with Cyberlink Screen recorder. I have, it rendered to 10GB. See pics, please.

File information in terms of resolution, fps (whether interleaved or progressive), codec, bit rate etc. would help, they all have a big impact on filesize. If you have MediaInfo installed on your system that will provide much more useful information.

Having said that, it has been my experience that PDR does seem to increase file size but not to the extent that it matters to me. I've always been well satisfied with default settings, but if it's an issue for you then you could experiment (a search for "custom profile" will give you lots to look at).

Quote File information in terms of resolution, fps (whether interleaved or progressive), codec, bit rate etc. would help, they all have a big impact on filesize. If you have MediaInfo installed on your system that will provide much more useful information.

Having said that, it has been my experience that PDR does seem to increase file size but not to the extent that it matters to me. I've always been well satisfied with default settings, but if it's an issue for you then you could experiment (a search for "custom profile" will give you lots to look at).

I don't have it. Getting ready for a 4 hour online class. I'll post when I get the info - Thank you much!

To be honest I've never concerned myself about file size and as I said I use PDR's defaults but this got me interested. I just ran a 25 second clip from one of my security cameras through PDR and produced using my 'favourite' profile i.e. H264 MP4 1920x1080 25fps at 16 Mbps. I started with a file just over 6MB and the file produced by PDR was 48MB. It sounds like an enormous increase until you look at the MediaInfo output where it's immediately obvious why that has happened when you look at the bit rate for each file.

I always say that you should try to produce edited video to more or less the same specification as the original unless, as in my case, you are happy with what you are getting .

It's no issue when going from 6 MB to 48MB. But from 1 GB to 11 GB, especially when uploading to a site and people must download it is rediculous. I have no clue why i can't take a 1GB file, edit 25% out of it, render it as a .wmv file (what it started as) and get a reasonably similar file size. What am I doing wrong? Or is there a tool that will do this? Thanks much!

Quote It's no issue when going from 6 MB to 48MB. But from 1 GB to 11 GB, especially when uploading to a site and people must download it is rediculous. I have no clue why i can't take a 1GB file, edit 25% out of it, render it as a .wmv file (what it started as) and get a reasonably similar file size. What am I doing wrong? Or is there a tool that will do this? Thanks much!

You're not doing anything wrong, but the puzzling piece is that you have a source clip that's so far out of the norm. HD 30p clips generally require around 20Mbps for good quality detail, and a 4 hour source clip should be around 36GB in size. You have a clip that's more than 20x smaller, which implies that it has a bitrate of under 1Mbps.

That's astonishingly low, and would only make sense if you recorded with a variable bitrate AND the screen you were recording was almost completely static, with only minor ongoing changes. That's why Longedge asked you to post the MerdiaInfo details, as that's the gold standard on the forum for sharing critical clip info.

You can download it for free from here, and you'll need to run it one time after installing it, and then you'll be able to right-click on any media clip in File Manager and pull up the MediaInfo details. You can take and save a screenshot, or save the details as a text file. Then attach either file here.

Another alternative would be to upload your WMV clip to the cloud and paste a link to it here. That way, other people could check the clip themselves and find the appropriate producing profile to give you good quality but with a lower file size.

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Thanks very much for getting a copy of the original file to me! As I suspected, It does use a variable bitrate and the average bitrate is only 690kbps:



Interestingly, if I try to produce the entire clip to HD 30p WMV, the projected file size stays at 1.3GB but it would take over 22 hours to produce!

As an alternative, I think creating a custom H.264/AVC profile is a good way to go as the produce time shortens to under 2 hours (for the 2h 48min cut version) and the file size should only increase to around 4GB.

The size will still increase because the lowest bitrate that PD will accept for an AVC output profile is 3Mbps. If you have a computer that can produce H.265/HEVC with hardware encoding, you can reduce the file size by 1/3 as PD will accept a 2Mbps bitrate for that codec, and you'll still have a reasonable produce time.

To make a custom profile, go to the Produce room, select H.264/AVC (or H.265), then click on the "+" button to bring up the profile editor. Give the profile a name and enter any other info in the comments section, then click on the Video tab and set the values to those shown in the attached screenshot.

You should then be able to produce your edited clip in a reasonable amount of time, and while you'll have a bigger files size than your original clip, it won't be 10x or beyond.

Another way to approach thsi is to search the web for "WMV video cutter"

There are plenty of 3rd party apps (some paid, some free) that will let you cut out various chunks of a clip and then join the remaining pieces together without producing/rendering. You'd probably need to download several and test them to see how easy it is to do your particular edits and whether or not it's worth dealing with ads or unwanted add-on programs that might get installed, but that would be the best way to get the 25% reduction in file size you were originally seeking

YouTube/optodata

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We don’t have JShep file to look at. Here is an idea and it should not take 22 hours to produce. Go ahead and produce the edited project using a standard profile using Intel acc. for wmv or Nvidia acc. for h.264. It could take less than 1 hour.

Use a converter like Handbrake or Avidemus to convert the produced file to a low bitrate mp4. Optodata – Do you think this could fly??

Does that make the file size blow up?

Also, I make these with the PD15 Screen Recorder. I make them at 30fps. I made 2 more today, 2 hours long each. Each file is 700MB.
Please help me understand why PD15 doesn't read the bitrate and produce a file of the exact same characteristcs, insted of these monumentally huge files that look no better than the original... Thanks!

Quote We don’t have JShep file to look at. Here is an idea and it should not take 22 hours to produce. Go ahead and produce the edited project using a standard profile using Intel acc. for wmv or Nvidia acc. for h.264. It could take less than 1 hour.

Use a converter like Handbrake or Avidemus to convert the produced file to a low bitrate mp4. Optodata – Do you think this could fly??

I agree, but "should not" and "does not" are two differnt things.

The original clip has content that OP prefers to keep private, but he PM'd me a link so I have been working with it. On my Surface Pro 3, there are no HW options for any WMV profile:



And with CPU producing, the estimated file size looks great but after 3 minutes, only 28 seconds have been produced and the time remaining counter keeps creeping upward:



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DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

I'm away from my new i9 machine but I just logged in remotely and tried producing this clip. Sure enough, even without any HW producing options for WMV I'm getting a much better response from my desktop:



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Wow, exactly what was the config for this? When I exported with the wmv format, the file looked like garbage.

Quote I'm away from my new i9 machine but I just logged in remotely and tried producing this clip. Sure enough, even without any HW producing options for WMV I'm getting a much better response from my desktop:

Well of course a i9-9900K is a little faster than a Surface Pro 3, no surprise there. Nvidia and/or QS does not support HW WMV encoding, however, you should be able to activate "Produce WMV video with Speed Mode" in pref and get a ~3-5X speedup vs without if desired.

Jeff

Quote Well of course a i9-9900K is a little faster than a Surface Pro 3, no surprise there. Nvidia and/or QS does not support HW WMV encoding, however, you should be able to activate "Produce WMV video with Speed Mode" in pref and get a ~3-5X speedup vs without if desired.

Jeff

The magnitude of the difference was surprising, though. The i9 finished in 38 min total vs. an unusable 18+ hours on the SP3. Checking the Speed Mode WMV box did make a difference as you stated, with the time dropping to under 5 hours, but that's still a very long time.

Back to the original issue: for some reason when JShep produces a 2h 48m version of a 4h, 1.2GB wmv clip to the 1080 30p WMV profile, the produced file ends up 10GB in size, despite a vrey low bitrate. When I produce the same clip (shortened to the same duration) with the same profile, the file size is only 1.3GB::



JShep, I think it might help to follow the steps in the Read Me Before Posting sticky post at the top of the forum thread and post both the DxDiag results and the exact version of PD. It's possible that this issue is related to one or more drivers or something about the way your system is configured, and the requested details will help figure things out.

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DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Quote Back to the original issue: for some reason when JShep produces a 2h 48m version of a 4h, 1.2GB wmv clip to the 1080 30p WMV profile, the produced file ends up 10GB in size, despite a vrey low bitrate. When I produce the same clip (shortened to the same duration) with the same profile, the file size is only 1.3GB::

Because he's probably basing the size estimate from reading the "Remaining" on PD "Produce" screen prior to actually starting the encoding process, essentially just after selecting the WMV profile. Since his video is basic screen capture with fairly static screens of CAD and simple voice over, the avg bitrate will be very low with WMV, hence the small file size. It can and will have a high maximum bitrate, but just very short duration with this type of screen capture. One simply can't achieve that with H.264 and/or H.265 with PD as was suggested prior.

Jeff

Quote Because he's probably basing the size estimate from reading the "Remaining" on PD "Produce" screen prior to actually starting the encoding process, essentially just after selecting the WMV profile. Since his video is basic screen capture with fairly static screens of CAD and simple voice over, the avg bitrate will be very low with WMV, hence the small file size. It can and will have a high maximum bitrate, but just very short duration with this type of screen capture. One simply can't achieve that with H.264 and/or H.265 with PD as was suggested prior.

Jeff

No, he produced it and it's actually 10GB. I have crappy WiFi speed where I'm at right now so I'm downloading it to my main PC and I'll post the MediaInfo details when it finishes.



EDIT: Here's the screenshot. For some reason, the video bitrate is 8Mbps and that blows up the file size:



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DS365 | Win11 Pro | Ryzen 9 3950X | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB RAM | 10TB SSDs | 5K+4K HDR monitors

Canon Vixia GX10 (4K 60p) | HF G30 (HD 60p) | Yi Action+ 4K | 360Fly 4K 360°

Quote No, he produced it and it's actually 10GB. I have crappy WiFi speed where I'm at right now so I'm downloading it to my main PC and I'll post the MediaInfo details when it finishes.

EDIT: Here's the screenshot. For some reason, the video bitrate is 8Mbps and that blows up the file size:

More than likely because in this particular "Produce" case he has the older WMV encoder, the 8 Series, vs your 9 Series, or wmv2 vs wmv3. Microsoft made some pretty big changes.

His initial message was "When I prepare to produce it, every filetype shows a minimum of 12GB", hence my comment which still should be observed. If one looks at size at this prepare stage as was written, it's simply based on basic profile bitrate and duration. This is shown below for this 168min duration clip, keep in mind, audio bitrate fixed so not a perfect linear scaler with video bitrate but close.
6Mbps > 7.4GB
8Mbps > 9.8GB
10Mbps > 12.2GB
20Mbps > 23.9GB

This initial prepare approach is totally valid for action video, totally overestimated for this CAD training when a very large portion of the screen is static and long action video pauses during audio class discussions, WMV encoder 9 is extremely good for this capture bitrate profile he would have, it maintains great quality at low file size as it will adjust from less than 1Mbps all the way to say 10Mbps and even high instantaneously.

Jeff