[mythtv-users] WAY OT, formats for transcoding camera movies

[Mark J. Small]

Hi everybody,

This is way off topic, but you folks know an awful lot about video codecs and 
compression, so I figured I'd ask anyway.

I'm looking to transcode some video that I took with my digital camera to make 
them take less space and possibly be email friendly.

The videos are currently 640x480 avi's in MJPEG format with uncompressed audio 
at 30 fps.  Here is some output from mplayer:

VIDEO:  [MJPG]  640x480  24bpp  30.000 fps  9214.6 kbps (1124.8 kbyte/s)
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffmjpeg] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg MJPEG decoder)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [pcm] Uncompressed PCM audio decoder
AUDIO: 11024 Hz, 1 ch, u8, 88.2 kbit/100.00% (ratio: 11024->11024)
Selected audio codec: [pcm] afm: pcm (Uncompressed PCM)
==========================================================================


With these settings, a one minute video takes about 68 MB, which is a little 
crazy.    I would like to transcode this to something quite a bit smaller, 
and still have decent video quality.  Here's the kicker.  I want to be able 
to play it with stock Windows Media Player, with no added codecs.  The 
recipients would get awfully confused otherwise.

Any suggestions?

Mark