Why can't I compress the video after digitizing the videotape???

Question

Video processing

I digitized a video cassette using EasyCap and Honestech VHStoDVD 8.
I got a .mpg video file, duration 3 hours, resolution 752x582 and weight 10.6 GB.
In theory, it is necessary to compress it, otherwise there are still a lot of cassettes, but there is no memory.
I tried to run it through AnyVideoConverter and MediaCoder (H.264 encoder) several times, and got a minimum size of 10.2 GB.
Did I do something wrong? Or is that how it should be? First time I'm doing this.
So, is it possible to compress it normally? If so, how and why didn't I succeed?

Answer 1

Download ffmpeg and on the command line type something like

ffmpeg -i "VHS-01.mpg" -c:v libx264 -c:a copy "VHS-01.mp4"
// VHS-01.mpg – название вашего видео файла.

This will compress the video with the h264 codec, which reduces the size pretty well.
A long video will be compressed for a very long time - in proportion to three hours. Therefore, first experiment with a short segment of a minute or two. See how long it takes. By how much is the file size reduced.

Answer 2

And you can also try in H265 with a bitrate, like that, at 8M (you can tweak it to taste).

ffmpeg -i "VHS-01.mpg" -c:v libx265 -b:v 8M -c:a aac -b:a 128k "VHS-01.mp4"

It should compress even longer than on the advice of H264, but the volume will also be less. H265 compresses the best at the moment.
And if you don't feel sorry for the time, then:

ffmpeg -y -i "VHS-01.mpg" -c:v libx265 -b:v 8M -x265-params pass=1 -an -f mp4 NUL && ^
ffmpeg -i "VHS-01.mpg" -c:v libx265 -b:v 8M -x265-params pass=2 -c:a aac -b:a 128k "VHS-01.mp4"

It's all under Windows, if that. I do through bat files.
Here are more details, plus examples with CRF are analyzed.
If you have a fairly new NVIDIA video card, you can download Adobe Media Encoder and / or Adobe Premiere, put a plugin on it and calculate through NVENC - there are both H264 and H265 (I warn you, there are some -as). True, they still compress worse than ffmpeg (in terms of quality / volume ratio).