First, before we get down to the actual testing, a brief digression on the subject of video codecs. The idea is simply to compress data as much as possible without any noticeable loss in quality. One minute of uncompressed film takes up about 2 GB of hard drive space. Modern compression methods such as Divx and WMV allow the compression of this type of file down to less than 1% of its original size. Using these codecs, a full-length movie will then fit onto a single CD while retaining at least half-way acceptable picture quality. But achieving that level of compression with good quality requires an extremely efficient video codec.
We still have the old bitrate calculator
Nothing new: there are preset profiles for the different usage options, which are especially important when using standalone players.
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