Uuuh, in that case, I think that the last link's host has compressed it more. It's supposed to be 32 MB, and the blockieness is not that bad at that size. I don't know how it got onto that site, or why they recompressed it, but you're looking at the wrong version. Get the "big" version.

That might also explain the MPEG-4 thing someone mentioned.

Yeah it was a 16mb AVI when I downloaded it.

I´ve recompressed it with XviD and uploaded it to Rapidshare, that´s why it´s 16MB. It doesn´t look worse than the "big" version. The source material is bad, watch it at 200% zoom and you´ll see what I mean.

I can't seem to download that version from there, I just keep getting longer & longer wait times so I can't really give my opinion on whether squeezing an already compressed video down to half it's size has no effect, but I can make some sort of wild guess. I recommend getting the larger 32 MB version, for broadband users I expect it's hardly any difference in practice to download 32 MB.

Of course it has some effect, but it´s minimal.

If you like try and recompress the original uncompressed video with the XviD codec, I bet you´ll like the result!
http://www.xvidmovies.com/codec/

For a very good quality set the target quantizer to 2.5. Also set "FourCC used" to "DIVX" under "Other Options".

Thanks for the link, I have installed and will look at it. Do you have any similar hints for audio compression? I used one called QDesign Music2 which seemed OK, but I know less about audio compression than I do about video compression.

LAME, an ACM MP3 codec (open source software):
http://www.free-codecs.com/download_soft.php?d=49&s=22

Unpack it, right-click LameACM.inf and click "Install". It then shows up in whatever video software you use.

Tell your video software to convert the sound stream to 44.1kHz, 48kHz is too much. Then set LAME to 160kbps or 192kbps CBR (Constant Bitrate).

The standard Windows MP3 decoder can read those streams, people don´t need the LAME codec to hear sound.

I followed the vid advice, in Premiere I get a window titled "XVID Status" and Premiere gets no further with the encoding. Closing the Status process kills the entire Premiere app.

I´ve asked Google, it´s a known problem with Premiere. Switch off the XviD status screen, "Other options"/"Display encoding status", then it should work.

Aah, thanks for that :) it works OK now. In that it doesn't crash anymore, the initial results are less than good (bigger file, terrible artifacts) but at least I can fiddle the settings now.

Cheers :up: