Help For An Idiot . . .
 

I'm trying to clip a bit out of a very large video file, so that it can be posted here. I should point out at this stage that I've never used any video editing software or anything like it before. So I downloaded Virtual Dub, and worked out how to clip away all the bits that I don't need. I then saved the bit I wanted to post, but even though it's only a minute and a half of video, it's 716 MB in size, which was the original size of the file. Clearly I've done something stupid, but what?

If anyone can put me right, I'd really appreciate it - I am completely tech-illiterate, so please talk to me as if you were talking to a toddler on this matter! Which buttons to press and in which order would be perfect. Sorry to bother you!

Here's what you do:

After you have the video clipped down to just what you want...

1. Go to the "Video" menu.
2. Select "Compression..."
3. I'm going to assume you have a bunch of codecs downloaded and they should show up in a list. If you don't have the codecs, download the K-lite codec pack.
4. Assuming you have the codecs, I recommend selecting Xvid, but Divx is also OK.
5. Click "OK".
6. Save the video as you were doing before.

That should solve your problem.

Fango