Programs to compress uncompressed .mpg and/or .flv files

[MegaScientifical]

I have several very large, uncompressed video files I want to reduce the filesize. I need a program which can achieve compression with minimal quality loss. I know it can depend on encoders and such, but for the time being I'm hoping there are general programs I can try before getting into those specifics.

[Ad Bot]

[Night Fox]

compression is just done by switching to a more compressed format
I don't think there's much else you can do with video

[0xBRIANSMITH]

use handbreak

[MegaScientifical]

compression is just done by switching to a more compressed format
I don't think there's much else you can do with video

Just curious programs to use, basically. Any recommendations? I used to use SUPER converter, but they turned it into adware central so I had to abandon it... Sad, they had a really good program, but they had to make money somehow and they started doing that...

use handbreak

http://handbrake.fr/ ?

[Rainzx¹]

You can't compress without losing.

[0xBRIANSMITH]

Just curious programs to use, basically. Any recommendations? I used to use SUPER converter, but they turned it into adware central so I had to abandon it... Sad, they had a really good program, but they had to make money somehow and they started doing that...

http://handbrake.fr/ ?

yah that one

[BlueCacti]

Gee i wonder what kind of video megascience could be compressing?

[Frankie²]

Gee i wonder what kind of video megascience could be compressing?

why does it matter

[MegaScientifical]

You can't compress without losing.

Minimal, I mean.

yah that one

I'll try it.

Gee i wonder what kind of video megascience could be compressing?

Stream videos, so no compression.

Edit: Handbrake only supports .mp4 and .m4v? I need .mpg or .flv.

[McJobless]

Use WinRAR.

i'm so clever

[MegaScientifical]

Possible, although you still have to offload to play.

[Badspot]

ffmpeg is sort of the baseline mpeg encoder.  It's a command line tool so it's complicated, but it can do a lot.

If you need the .flv's for playing in a web page, I'd recommend going with mp4 instead.

[MegaScientifical]

Hmm, I'll have to learn exactly what I'd need to accomplish it with that, but I have messed with command line before. I wonder if there is any viable user-created UI I could use to make messing with it easier, though.

[origami]

Hmm, I'll have to learn exactly what I'd need to accomplish it with that, but I have messed with command line before. I wonder if there is any viable user-created UI I could use to make messing with it easier, though.

ffmpeg is popular enough that every time i've had to google a usage i get the relevant command line parameters for the solution

[MegaScientifical]

Well I'm mainly looking up "ffmpeg compression." I got this page, but some videos are rather long, so I'm not sure this particular method would help: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/28803/how-can-i-reduce-a-videos-size-with-ffmpeg

Also, found this frontend, although it says installing on Windows 7/8 is a bit more complicated: http://www.avanti.arrozcru.org/