Video transcoding is not a very easy subject to dive in, it often requires many calculations in order to figure out the compression method to be used, the codec, the bit rate, audio compression and many others calculations related to video encoding. The first step is always to try to figure out where you are going to be using the video, will you be streaming it on the web? or perhaps played it back on your high-definition device? — according to your answer you will need to to select different settings in order to optimize the quality and size of your media.
The Format:
Depending be type of hardware that you have you’ll need to change the format or container you will use to transcode the video in other words, you will need to choose among Audio Video Interleave also known as AVI, Matroska (MKV), Windows media video for WMV, Motion Pictures Experts Group or MPEG or any other type of container which comes to mind is compatible with the tools you have.
The most popular formats are obviously the oldest ones, these are AVI and MPEG, some people might even argue that the Windows media video format should be listed as a third however choosing among these multimedia containers is up to you. The utility you can achieve with each and every one of these will be and look different for instance, you can use different codecs in order to optimize an AVI stream using a low bit rate and keeping small file size, if he decide to use MPEG-2 your file size will go much higher because the video bit rate will be higher as well. You need to keep in mind that there is a direct correlation between the great and file size.
The Tools:
In order to edit your video streams you will need to use many tools which will allow you to merge, split and enhance the appearance of your multimedia file, among the best tools to use are: virtual dub, TMPEGenc, Adobe Premiere, Windows movie maker, Sony Vegas, Ulead Studios software, and many others.
The tools mentioned above will help you edit the video and even do some encoding to each media stream, virtual dub and Dr. DivX are two of the best tools available to transcode video into DivX or any other format, other tools you can use include auto guardian knot also known as AutoGK, bbMPEG, AVI2VCD and many others.
Once you have decided which format to transcode your video on and which tool to utilize you will need to do further research in order to tweak and adjust the settings of the codecs in order to achieve the results desired.