Improve quality of WMV movies

[Hamudz22]

Hi, I convert my mpeg files to wmv in order to save hard drive space. But, When it's in wmv format the quality is not as good as it was in mpeg. Is there any way I can bring the quality back to the way it was originally?

[GX1_Man]

That's the tradeoff.

[Hamudz22]

The movies do look a little better when I save it as a bigger file size. I save it as a 2.0 mb per second file, and it takes about 20 - 30 megs off of my hard drive.

[rs8389]

It all depends on what you want.  If you want max quality, you can kick up the bitrate of the wmv file, if you want minimum file size, you can drop the bitrate.  You'll probably want to find the midpoint where you're the most comfortable, with high quality and small file size.  Keep in mind that by dropping the audio bitrate, you can also drop the filesize.  Framerate is another big factor in video files...

If you still can't find the settings you like, you can try other compression methods.  I personally like to use DivX or XviD...  They both use MPEG-4 (Avi) compression, and can typically store 2 hour movies into 700MB at acceptable quality (Even at really good quality, it'll most likely fit into 2 CDs [1400MB]).

[Dell4700]

Hamudz22,

Answer:  No

I also like mpeg formats.

If you want to save disk space, you could move your video files off the hard drive and save them on CD or DVD.  Most current PCs will play them Okay from disk.  You could also add more drive space.

If quality is important, I wouldn't recommend conversion.  In general, conversion/compressor algorithms reduce the quality of any original file.

Dell