OpenShot exporting a video with a reasonable file size

2

I'm slightly editing an existing video, and trying to export from OpenShot 1.4.3. The advanced settings in export dialog - which BTW forget my settings everytime I iterate - doesn't allow me to specify the bitrate for the video stream except choosing existing options from a popup menu.

The closest ones are "384 kb/s - Video Conferencing" and "1.25 Mb/s - VCD Quality". Can somebody enlighten me why the former produces a 26 MB file (for a 5 1/2 minutes video), with abysmal quality, and the latter produces a 1.4 GB file. I mean - can you do the maths - according to my skills it should be an increase of 3.2x? How can the step between the closest two presets result in the file size growing by a factor of 54?

Is there a trick to get close to a desired file size, such as 120 MB? How?

Codec is libx264, size is 1080p 25 fps.

Edit: I have a hunch though, because clip properties show timeline positions with seconds formatted with a "German" comma, e.g. "Length: 3,56" seconds, and not "3.56" seconds. I'm using an English Debian Stretch, but I had to install a "en (Danish)" locale because of horrible American date formatting. Is it possible that "Danish English" is flipping period and comma for number formatting similar to German, and that applications exhibit bugs when wrongly parsing strings?

0__

Posted 2017-06-02T10:00:49.263

Reputation: 523

Using mediainfo, copy & paste the properties of the video stream - specifically encoding settings to see what was actually applied. Use View->Text mode.

– Gyan – 2017-06-02T10:14:43.233

en-gb will fix the dates & avoid the comma as decimal, btw – Tetsujin – 2017-06-02T10:28:56.660

@Tetsujin there are other issues with en-gb; for example, I'm getting funny British words in the GUI, for example "Wastebasket" instead of trash bin. Is it too much to ask for a sane locale? – 0__ – 2017-06-02T10:30:18.943

LOL @ Wastebasket; I haven't seen it on Debian, I'm Mac which still calls it Trash even in en-gb. Reminds me of a holiday in Venice - half the restaurants were over-translating the menus, so there were lots of dishes called simply 'pasta with meat sauce' & you had to look at the Italian to figure out what you were ordering ;) – Tetsujin – 2017-06-02T10:32:31.437

Answers

0

This is a bug with string parsing. It seems OpenShot doesn't correctly apply locale settings, some in some parts of the interface it uses the Gnome locale settings, but in others it assumes US locale. So I had used Format: Danish English which is a known trick to get sane date formats in Gnome. But apparently here the decimal period is a comma, as in German. So the presets offer "1.25 Mb/s", but the st**** program parses its own GUI elements, and so translates its own preset option into "1,250 Mb/s".

I have temporarily switched back to US format, and now the file becomes 60 MB in size. My problem is not gone, I want 120 MB. The next preset after 1.25 Mb/s is 5.00 Mb/s. I need something in the middle.

0__

Posted 2017-06-02T10:00:49.263

Reputation: 523

Asked: 2017-06-02T10:00:49.263

Viewed: 4 264 times

Active: 2017-06-02T10:59:16.590