[Mi-local-history] Advice on converting large MP4 files

[Mitchell Mulroy]

Hello everyone,

My name is Mitchell Mulroy. I am the Local History Librarian for the Sterling Heights Public Library. Recently, I've tried to make a push to digitize our audiovisual materials.  Mostly, I have been working with a external drive and the "Handbrake" file conversion program to encode DVD recordings of old city council meetings. I then upload the council meetings to our local history depository.

The main issue is that the site we upload to doesn't accept files of over 400MB, and some of the disk files are quite large. Most of the time, I am able to convert the files to a target length by tinkering with either the presets on Handshake or the video quality slider. But I've noticed for especially large files of 4K Megabytes or over (around 4+ hours) the video either cuts off near the end or is too large to upload. I have been experimenting with this for a while and haven't had much success.

I was wondering if anyone else had experience using Handbrake or programs like it, and if they would have any advice for getting larger file sizes down, while also not cutting off video. Thank you in advance to anyone that can help!

Best,
Mitchell Mulroy
Local History Librarian
Sterling Heights Public Library
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