Windows 7: is winzip useless for video files?

tried to convert a 910mb .mpg using winzip, I ended getting a 882 mb zip file, tried again this time using zipx and got 878mb this time.

is this normal or am I doing something wrong? How can I get a better ratio.

Zipping an .mpg is not usually recommended. There's not that much extra data that can be compressed.
If you want a smaller file, it's best to encode it to a lower size or transcode it to a different format.

yeah, I think I need to convert it to another format, 900MB for a 13min low quality video is ridiculous wasteful.

I use Super (c) to compress or convert some of my videos, works really well with the youtube tutorials I sometimes make, and the quality loss is minimal. Did one the other day 158mb came out 47mb. It's Free and supports loads of formats plus it's pretty easy to use but does have some advanced features that some may find usefull.



Here's the link SUPER (C)

Soz it's a bit of a bugger to get to the actual download file but once you get there it's worth it.

Super is hardly what I consider a beginner's tool!
You should try something simple at first, like this one:
Freemake - Best Freeware Alternatives To Paid Video Software
1)drag/drop your Mpeg clip into the window
2)pick a base format from the bottom and
3)fine tune it with the drop down arrow to fit your needs like this:

After you picked your preset you will see the estimated resulting size in the bottom right.

In this example I squeezed a 1.46GB MPEG-2 into a ~700MB MP4 with virtually no loss of quality that's a gain of more than 50 % space and it took all but 10 minutes

Just one more word to precautions: Try not to change the original encoding around too much to get decent results like change the screen resolution but leave the frame rate alone. Set the Bitrate to auto until you get a hang of it and at least in the beginning don't delete the original before you checked the results !!!

-DG