[peekay1000]

Is there an industry standard with respect to compression software. Whilst browsing the net for the 'best' compression software for avi - mpeg2 I have come across a myriad of different software providers, some free, some expensive. Do they all do the same job? Is there likely to be a quality difference between them all.
I have (pre-installed) sony vegas - whilst i can get it to capture the video form my camera, i haven't found a way to convert the avi file to mpeg2 - is it possible on sony vegas?
thanks

[mmace]

CCE is generally one of the best (Cinema Craft Encoder)
personally, I use ffmpeg which is free

[Mr Lazy]

There is no 'industry standard' as such. The only standards refer to the compression methods themselves (ie. MPEG2 etc.) therefore the quality depends how well a certain tool implements the compression.

ffmpeg is a command line tool so perhaps a bit daunting for the average consumer, but there is a GUI front-end for it called WinFF which I've used and is ok.

There are quite a few other free tools that will convert AVI to MPEG such as SUPER and Media Coder. SUPER I believe is fairly popular but I haven't tried it yet (might have a play later today). Media Coder I have tried and is fairly complex but appears flexible though I haven't been able to produce a result yet (probably need to spend time going through the settings). Often it's a case of trying a few out and seeing which you like the best.

A lot of people swear by the TMPGEnc family - there's a 30 day free trial for MPEG2 encoding with TMPGEnc.

[senu]

There are "compression" software by which I suppose you mean video conversion software
I use Canopus Procoder 2 ( which has been superceeded) but there is a very affordable but capable Procoder Express
Main Concept also makes cpable affordable ones
Conversion takes time and is best left when you dont need o use the PC
However a lot of Video editing software have very capable 3rd party encoders as plug ins or intergral to them which means that using standalone converters may not always be nessesary

I know you already have your DV AVIs but for most people the same software used to import ( unless it is WMM) is also capable of generating other file types as part of the workflow.
This is rather less labourous than importing as DV AVI , then comverting to another format later on

I suspect you havent really explored the use of Vegas

To answer your question directly; Import your DV AVI into Vegas and "export" it to your desired format
This is the same as "converting"or compressing it
And is the end stage , after editing it ( if desired) before creating a DVD
Certainly people Import from camcorder to make web friendly video filesas well all within Vegas

[ramsy66]

I use SUPER. It converts anything to anything.

[peekay1000]

Senu
your posts are clear, concise and always fully answer the question asked.
Thanks very much

[rhubarbe]

Except when he's had a few s

[mmace]

Originally Posted by ramsy66

I use SUPER. It converts anything to anything.

I've used this a few times for flash video, tried it with other things but cannot recommend it as there's no real bitrate control, especially for Hi-def stuff (unless I'm missing something?!)