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Video File Reducer Software Free Download

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  1. Wondershare UniConverter. Wondershare UniConverter is the best video compression software.
  2. Mp4 size reducer free download - MP3 OGG WMA Size Reducer, MP4 File Size Reduce Software, Image Size Reducer Pro, and many more programs.
  3. PC owners can reduce the size of their videos with AnyVideo Converter regardless of the version of the Windows OS they have because the file compression software is compatible with Windows XP and all later versions of the OS.

Video Compressor™ is a tool that can impressively reduce sizes of video files. Nowadays video is the most popular multimedia content. Even micro digital cameras built in smartphones are able to take videos with HD resolutions. However, usually HD video has huge file size. The storage of such videos requres a lot of. Movavi is a paid-only software, but comes with a limited 7-day free trial that allows you to convert the first half of each video file. If you're using the free trial, you'll get reminders to purchase a full license, but other than that, there are no ads, and the installer doesn't try to install additional software.

by Christine Smith • 2020-10-28 17:35:36 • Proven solutions

We can reduce the file size of any video with a video compressor. A useful tool can help you compress videos without losing quality, much more accessible, and straightforward. This article will introduce 13 programs here. Read the parts below to learn these compression programs.

Part 1. Most helpful video compressor in market.

It is handy when sharing compressed files over the Internet because it takes less time to download or upload. The latest version of a compressor for PC and Mac allows you to open compressed files in almost all the standard formats. However, this feature lacks advanced options, and you may need a more powerful tool to unzip files, or even compress multiple files into one. We recommend the best compression software, Wondershare UniConverter (originally Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate), to compress videos in 1000+ formats on your PC/Mac.

Wondershare UniConverter - The best video converter and compressor software

Your Complete Video Toolbox

  • Compress different video formats: MOV, MP4, AVI, MP4, and +1000 more.
  • Trim, crop, cut the video with a real-time preview to reduce the video size.
  • Compress a video by changing its resolution, bit rate, formats, file size, and frame rate.
  • 30X faster compressing and converting speed than other standard converters.
  • Transfer video from PC/Mac to other devices like iPhone/iPad/Android devices.
  • It can download or record videos from video sharing sites, like YouTube.
  • Versatile toolbox includes fixing video metadata, GIF maker, DVD Burner, CD Burner, and screen recorder.
  • Supported OS: Windows 10/8/7/XP/Vista, Mac OS 10.15 (Catalina), 10.14, 10.13, 10.12, 10.11, 10.10, 10.9, 10.8, 10.7, 10.6
Security Verified, 5,481,347 people have downloaded it.

'How do I reduce the MB size of a video?' If you have a similar question, follow the guide to compress videos using Wondershare UniConverter for Mac/PC:

The general steps are as below:

  • Step 1: Add files to the best video compression software.
  • Step 2: Reduce the file size by moving the compression bar.
  • Step 3: Start to compress a video without losing quality.

Read the details below. We have made the Mac version, for example. For the Windows version, you can go with the same steps.

Step 1 Launch Wondershare UniConverter on Mac and add a video.

After you download, install, and open Wondershare video size reducer, choose the Video Compressor tab. Then you'll get a new window where asks you to add a file. Click the Document icon to select a file, or drag-and-drop a video to the interface directly.

Step 2 Customize compression settings.

The necessary information of your video will show at the top panel. You can change video compression settings such as file size, bit rate, video resolution, video quality, and format by automatically moving the progress bar.

Step 3 Start compressing video size on Mac.

If you want to check what the video will be like, click on the Preview button. Finally, click on the Compress button to start video compression quickly.

As you can see, Wondershare UniConverter is an easy and fast movie compressor. Suppose you're looking for a batch compressor. In that case, Wondershare super video compression software can also help you to achieve by reading steps on how to compress multiple videos and crop/trim videos easily >>.

Part 2. Another 8 video size compressors you can try.

There are many online video-sized compressors for free that allow you to reduce the size of different formats and other free features without installing any software. Next, we want to share with you the top 8 online video-sized reducers that will reduce your file size.

1. Clideo

If you want to reduce video file size online, Clideo has got you covered. You don't have to download any software or any tool, and you can convert or compress any clip with this platform.

Here are some features:

● It can compress the 500MB max video to the desired size.

● It can combine many videos, images, or audio content and come up with a single file.

2. FreeConvert

FreeConvert is an online video reducer. Recently, the site released the image compression tool that is very useful in reducing the picture's file size.

Here are some features of this software:

● It can compress a jpg file right here

● It is an advanced option for professional videographers to enhance video resolution, adjust the audio stream, and correct video orientation issues

3. Clipchamp

It can reduce the size of your video and still retain the original quality. It is efficient for your pc that is free and very easy to use.

Let us shed some light on the features:

● It can compress MP4, MOV, AVI, and other formats

● The free version will have the watermark on the final output

It can accept a source media file from your PC, or by pasting its URL if the film is published somewhere on the Internet.

Key Features:

● It can accept video files of up to 200MB

● It allows you to define the size of the output clip manually

● It enables you to choose audio quality from its corresponding drop-down list

5. Ps2pdf

Ps2pdf is one of the most efficient software on the market right now. It has parade tools that will prove to be very useful and will give you impressive results. It is swift, and to top it all.

Key Features:

● It retains the video quality without compromising on the quality

● You can split and merge files

● You can convert videos to pdf and vice versa

6. Online UniConverter -Best Free Online Video Size Reducer

'How can I compress a video without losing quality?' Online UniConverter (originally Media.io) online video compression tool is a handy online tool that allows you to reduce the size of a video in a moment. It is helpful for those cases where we want to share a video on social networks or send it to a friend through an Email, and we are in a hurry. It is free to use every time you need it, without any ads or watermarks. You can compress videos in most common formats easily and fast without installation.

Key Features:

● It is free to use

● It can customize video resolution, file size, and video format easily

YouCompress is another compression program that can compress your clips for free. All you need to do is, upload the footage and leave the rest to the web app.

Key Features:

● It offers up to 85% compression ratio

File reducer gif

● It keeps your media files secured with SSL encrypted connection

● It offers a deletion link post-compression that can remove the source file from the YouCompress server

8. VideoSmaller

VideoSmaller is a compressor online that helps you to reduce the size of your files. It is available in nine different languages and has many other features that you can use online in a moment without installing any software. You can just select your video file and the size that you want to reduce it, and it will be ready in some minutes. Maybe it has some limitations when you want to edit a video, but it is beneficial when you need to compress a video file.

Key Features:

● It allows users to upload video files up to 500 MB

● It can extract audio from videos

Part 3. 4 video compressor apps for iOS/Android.

In this section, we want to help you choose the best video compression apps that cover all your requirements. We can find many video reducers to download, but not all of them have the same features and offer an excellent quality service. Keep on reading about our recommended list of free software that will help you make your video short.

1. Shrink videos

Enjoying 4.7-Star rating on App Store, this iOS app allows you to reduce the size of the media files, typically videos and images, with as high up to 80% compression ratio. The program has simple UI and is available for both iPhones and iPads. Besides, it is a multilingual application, and the languages it supports English, Arabic, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Italian, etc.

Key Features:

● It can detect large videos Ubuntu 3d printer software.

● It can perform batch compression

● It allows you to share the compressed clips

2. Video Compress – Shrink Vids

Video Compress is another video compression app for iOS devices that you can use to free up your iPhone or iPad. The program offers a simple and intuitive UI, and even a non-techie can use the application to reduce the size of the media clips with merely a few taps on the screen.

Key Features:

● It has five built-in presets for compression, starting from 360p to Full HD 1080p

● It lets you manage the bitrate and resolution of the videos during compression

● It supports batch compression

3. Panda: Resize & Compress Video

With a 4.7-Star rating on Play Store, this Android app can compress the videos with almost no loss in picture quality. The good thing about the program is that it can reduce the size of the media clips to the extent that they can share via email.

Key Features:

● It lets you share the compressed videos to your favorite social media platform such as Facebook, Instagram, Line, etc.

● It enables you to resize the videos

● The latest version of the app compresses the clips ten times faster as compared to its previous version

4. Video Compress

With a decent 4.2-Star rating on Play Store, this Android app allows you to choose a video quality post-compression, i.e., low, normal, or high. The advanced algorithms automatically detect the length of the videos and compress the file size accordingly to give you a consistent output. The application can also extract the audio from video files and save the track in MP3 format.

Key Features:

● It creates a separate copy of the compressed video while leaving the original version intact.

● It can also extract the subtitles from the videos if they have any.

In conclusion, you can find compression software for different devices in this article and choose the most appropriate one as your needs. For Windows and Mac users, we recommend Wondershare UniConverter (originally Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate) most.

A video from shooting to uploading to the website generally goes through such a process: video capture, video editing, video compression, and upload.

The bit rate of the video we shoot via mobile phones and cameras far exceeds the bit rate of web allows. For instance, the bit rate of the video captured by the iOS device can easily surpass 50 Mbps. While Instagram allows for only 15 MB at most for all media (photos, videos or voice messages) to be sent or forwarded on any platforms. Once this bit rate is exceeded, some applications refuse to send the video, while others auto-compress your video dramatically at the cost of quality. Therefore, we should do it on our own to guarantee the video quality as high as possible.

Video Size Reducer Software

Yet, to find an ideal video size reducer is not that easy as expected. Some tools could not get your desired size, and some others reduce video size at the expense of video quality. Here we recommend you 5 best solutions to tackle this task.

1. VideoProc

VideoProc absolutely comes to an ideal 4K video size reducer software, which calls upon interframe and intraframe coding algorithms, along with advanced entropy coding to shrink your video to the hilt and get rid of temporal and spatial redundancies for a more efficient encoding, achieving 90% video size reduction with almost no quality loss.

It allows users to reduce video size in various ways, for example, cutting off unwanted parts to shorten your video length, splitting a large video into segments to adapt to social media's size limits, turning video format to a higher compression efficiency ones, like H.264 to HEVC, downscaling video resolution, lowering video bit rate, frame rate etc. Better yet, VideoProc is also fast. Using the unique level-3 hardware acceleration powered by Intel®, AMD® and NVIDIA® GPUs, together with auto copy feature, you can lower the CPU usage to 40% and process 4K UHD videos up to 47x real-time faster.

How to Reduce Video File Size with Best Image Quality in VideoProc

Step 1: Import your source video.

Download VideoProc, install and launch it. Then click 'Video' icon to enter the video conversion interface. Click '+ Video' button to load your source video.

Step 2: Apply one or more ways to reduce your video file size.

1. Select a higher compression efficiency output format. After your video loaded, click Target Format button to select an output format from the result window. You're highly suggested to choose a format with higher compression efficiency, for example, converting H.264 MP4 to HEVC, or going to YouTube/Facebook/Vimeo Video to choose MP4 for uploading to the web.

2. Adjust video parameters. Click Codec Option button to get into a window where you can lower frame rate, downscale video resolution such as from 4K UHD to 1080p/720p, reducing video bit rate, change aspect ratio and other more advanced audio/video parameters adjustment.

3. Trim the video length. Click the Cut button below the video info. And drag the green knob to cut off the unwanted parts to reduce the video file size.

4. Split video into segments. Click Toolbox button at the bottom of the panel, and double-click Split button to make a splitting of your video, deciding how many segments you want to split your video or split video at how many seconds.

5. Crop the video frame size. Click Crop button under the video information. Tick the box of Enable Crop and you can see the original video on the left has a dashed box now. Drag the dotted frame freely to crop the video from left, right, top and bottom, to remove unnecessary borders to get the highlighted area. And you can preview the output effect on the right window.

Step 3: Click on the RUN button to reduce video now.

2. VLC

VLC is free media player that can do so many post editing works beyond your imagination, things like transcoding, cutting, cropping, adding subtitles, and even change your video size to a proper file size so that you can easily ad successfully uploaded online to YouTube or to your iPhone/android devices. You can also lower down the Bitrate and Quality in a way to reduce video size.

Pros: Free and fast – platforms-orientated.

Video File Reducer software, free download Windows 7

Cons: You does not know how much size exactly the processed file would be.

How to Reduce a Video Size by Lowering the Overall Bitrate in VLC

Step 1. Go to the conversion panel.

Launch VLC and click Media > Convert / Save > +Add button and select the video.

Step 2. Choose a compression codec/format.

Click the arrow down button and choose H264 codec or drag the bar down to other possibilities - iPod, Android, YouTube. (H264 and HEVC/H265 is by far the most efficient compressing codec).

Step 3. Tweak the bit-rate, video size, quality, frame rate etc.

To make a video file smaller in VLC, you can also go advanced by clicking the wrench icon to adjust the video and audio bitrate, quality and frame rate under encoding parameters. It also allows you to scale down the resolution by 1/4, 1/2, 3/4.

3. Handbrake

Handbrake is a robust open source video transcoding tool that many commercial software are designed and developed catching hot on its reels. In comparison with VLC, this tool gives more choice over codecs and formats both rare and professional. While comparing to Final Cut Pro and iMovie on macOS, it is also lightweight with no more than 30MB in size which could be your ideal first choice to efficiently make a video file smaller with all media info crystal clear.

Pros: You can get a preview of the processed video to decide if its quality meet your requirement

Cons: You does not know how much size exactly, just as same as VLC.

How to Reduce Video Size in HandBrake

Step 1. Open a file in Handbrake.

You can either drop a file to the editing panel or click the 'File' choice - open a single video file. Choose the video.

Step 2. Adjust the parameters of this video.

You can change the video dimensions, set the video codec to H.265, change the FPS to lower ones, toggle the quality bar to lower quality etc.

Remember to choose the universal format 'MP4' as the output format.

Step 3. Click 'Start Encode' to process the video the way you like.

4. iMovie

Both Quicktime and iMovie can make a video file smaller. But Quicktime does not support tweaking the video by width or length. One can only choose to export video resolutions in lower 1080p, 720p, or 480p to achieve the reduction of the overall video size. However, in iMovie, you can do so many adjustments to shrink video file size by cutting/trimming the video content or lowering down the resolution and quality of the video upon sharing.

Pros: You get the estimated file size and video length crystal clear.

Cons: May consume a huge computer power to get things done.

How to Reduce Video File Size Using iMovie

Step 1. Open your video in iMovie.

You can then trim the video length and crop to reduce the video size/scale in iMovie very easily.

Step 2. Click the share button on the top right corner.

Step 3. Choose File.

Step 4. Change the video file size using iMovie free.

By selecting the format to 'Video and Audio' you'll be able to adjust the video resolution, quality, and processing speed. The estimated file size will be displayed according to your settings.

5. FreeConvert

During our tests, we are quite in love with this Freeconvert tool online as it provides all the possible means for changing a video file size – resize, change of codecs, change of video file size, etc. Users can reduce a video file size by video quality, bitrate, or video size, meaning you can even scale down a video to reduce file size.

Pros: You can apply multiple means combined.

Cons: Unfriendly for large video projects since it is working online and you cannot pause it.

How to Reduce Video Size Online in FreeConvert

Step 1. Go to Freeconvert.com.

Step 2. Tweak and preset video parameters.

There, you can choose the output format (MP4 recommended), video codec(H265 recommended). With different orientations - size, quality, bit-rate, you get different options.

Step 3. Upload a video as instructed by clicking the Choose File button.

You can either choose from your local folder, dropbox, google drive, or input a single URL.

Step 4. Click the compress now button to proceed and click Download MP4 button to save the video locally.

You'll have to wait for the video to be fully uploaded. And it will give a thoughtful notice telling you how much you've saved in total - 'You've saved xx%'

Tips for Reducing the Size of a Video

Before to figure out the issue 'How can we decrease the video size', we probably need to first make it clear that what determines a video size, then we can know where we will go and what we are going to do.

It is quite simple - the size of a video equals its duration multiplying its bitrate. There are possibly some newcomers who have little knowledge of video elements video bitrate. Video bitrate simply means how many bits one second duration of the video has. In some ways, one second video images have more bits, the size of video would be bigger but the video quality would be higher.

So if we want to decrease the size of a video, we have two ways to make it,

1. Shortening its duration

When we are shooting a video, mostly there must be some redundant shots. So we can remove such unwanted parts, shorten the duration, and make it smaller.

This is just one option, and the other one is breaking up the whole video file into multiple individual parts.

This is kind of silly, some of the friends probably think, since we have not reduced the video size at all by it. While in some situations, it would be the easiest way. For example, when we plan to share our videos on social media, we know that some social media has the limit for video size, and we can just cut them into multiple segments for uploading.

2. Lowering its bitrate

Well, you need to know that here lowering bitrate does not simply mean decreasing the bitrate of the video at all, but we suggest every second of the video conveys fewer bits. This is because, if we simply change the bitrate number of the video to be smaller, there might be image quality loss. Sacrificing image quality for smaller video size is definitely not what we want, right?

However, how can we change the bitrate, but not influencing the video quality, or as little as possible, at the same time?

Base on my personal experience and knowledge, still two options are on our list to try, cropping and video codec changing.

If the camera or other devices cover some needless views, when we are shooting a video, we can crop them and reduce the video size. While, if you think each scenery in the image is precious, you need the other option to help you, ie changing the video codec.

Video bitrate is determined by its resolution, frame rate, and its codec. While, if we change the resolution and frame rate directly, there is no doubt that it must lead to video quality loss. But changing the codec would have less influence on video quality or none at all.

Video codec helps us compress a video efficiently. While there are many types of the codec, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, H.265 (HEVC), VP8, VP9, XVID/DIVX, etc. And the compression efficiency of each codec differs. For now, H.265 would be the best. It has up to a 50% better compression ratio than the H.264 codec, which means it can save up to 50% video size compared to H.264.

So if you want to reduce video size by changing the video codec, H.265 would be a good choice. However, you need to know that H.265 has not been as popular as H.264, which means some applications are not compatible with it.

Video File Reducer software, free download

● It keeps your media files secured with SSL encrypted connection

● It offers a deletion link post-compression that can remove the source file from the YouCompress server

8. VideoSmaller

VideoSmaller is a compressor online that helps you to reduce the size of your files. It is available in nine different languages and has many other features that you can use online in a moment without installing any software. You can just select your video file and the size that you want to reduce it, and it will be ready in some minutes. Maybe it has some limitations when you want to edit a video, but it is beneficial when you need to compress a video file.

Key Features:

● It allows users to upload video files up to 500 MB

● It can extract audio from videos

Part 3. 4 video compressor apps for iOS/Android.

In this section, we want to help you choose the best video compression apps that cover all your requirements. We can find many video reducers to download, but not all of them have the same features and offer an excellent quality service. Keep on reading about our recommended list of free software that will help you make your video short.

1. Shrink videos

Enjoying 4.7-Star rating on App Store, this iOS app allows you to reduce the size of the media files, typically videos and images, with as high up to 80% compression ratio. The program has simple UI and is available for both iPhones and iPads. Besides, it is a multilingual application, and the languages it supports English, Arabic, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Italian, etc.

Key Features:

● It can detect large videos Ubuntu 3d printer software.

● It can perform batch compression

● It allows you to share the compressed clips

2. Video Compress – Shrink Vids

Video Compress is another video compression app for iOS devices that you can use to free up your iPhone or iPad. The program offers a simple and intuitive UI, and even a non-techie can use the application to reduce the size of the media clips with merely a few taps on the screen.

Key Features:

● It has five built-in presets for compression, starting from 360p to Full HD 1080p

● It lets you manage the bitrate and resolution of the videos during compression

● It supports batch compression

3. Panda: Resize & Compress Video

With a 4.7-Star rating on Play Store, this Android app can compress the videos with almost no loss in picture quality. The good thing about the program is that it can reduce the size of the media clips to the extent that they can share via email.

Key Features:

● It lets you share the compressed videos to your favorite social media platform such as Facebook, Instagram, Line, etc.

● It enables you to resize the videos

● The latest version of the app compresses the clips ten times faster as compared to its previous version

4. Video Compress

With a decent 4.2-Star rating on Play Store, this Android app allows you to choose a video quality post-compression, i.e., low, normal, or high. The advanced algorithms automatically detect the length of the videos and compress the file size accordingly to give you a consistent output. The application can also extract the audio from video files and save the track in MP3 format.

Key Features:

● It creates a separate copy of the compressed video while leaving the original version intact.

● It can also extract the subtitles from the videos if they have any.

In conclusion, you can find compression software for different devices in this article and choose the most appropriate one as your needs. For Windows and Mac users, we recommend Wondershare UniConverter (originally Wondershare Video Converter Ultimate) most.

A video from shooting to uploading to the website generally goes through such a process: video capture, video editing, video compression, and upload.

The bit rate of the video we shoot via mobile phones and cameras far exceeds the bit rate of web allows. For instance, the bit rate of the video captured by the iOS device can easily surpass 50 Mbps. While Instagram allows for only 15 MB at most for all media (photos, videos or voice messages) to be sent or forwarded on any platforms. Once this bit rate is exceeded, some applications refuse to send the video, while others auto-compress your video dramatically at the cost of quality. Therefore, we should do it on our own to guarantee the video quality as high as possible.

Video Size Reducer Software

Yet, to find an ideal video size reducer is not that easy as expected. Some tools could not get your desired size, and some others reduce video size at the expense of video quality. Here we recommend you 5 best solutions to tackle this task.

1. VideoProc

VideoProc absolutely comes to an ideal 4K video size reducer software, which calls upon interframe and intraframe coding algorithms, along with advanced entropy coding to shrink your video to the hilt and get rid of temporal and spatial redundancies for a more efficient encoding, achieving 90% video size reduction with almost no quality loss.

It allows users to reduce video size in various ways, for example, cutting off unwanted parts to shorten your video length, splitting a large video into segments to adapt to social media's size limits, turning video format to a higher compression efficiency ones, like H.264 to HEVC, downscaling video resolution, lowering video bit rate, frame rate etc. Better yet, VideoProc is also fast. Using the unique level-3 hardware acceleration powered by Intel®, AMD® and NVIDIA® GPUs, together with auto copy feature, you can lower the CPU usage to 40% and process 4K UHD videos up to 47x real-time faster.

How to Reduce Video File Size with Best Image Quality in VideoProc

Step 1: Import your source video.

Download VideoProc, install and launch it. Then click 'Video' icon to enter the video conversion interface. Click '+ Video' button to load your source video.

Step 2: Apply one or more ways to reduce your video file size.

1. Select a higher compression efficiency output format. After your video loaded, click Target Format button to select an output format from the result window. You're highly suggested to choose a format with higher compression efficiency, for example, converting H.264 MP4 to HEVC, or going to YouTube/Facebook/Vimeo Video to choose MP4 for uploading to the web.

2. Adjust video parameters. Click Codec Option button to get into a window where you can lower frame rate, downscale video resolution such as from 4K UHD to 1080p/720p, reducing video bit rate, change aspect ratio and other more advanced audio/video parameters adjustment.

3. Trim the video length. Click the Cut button below the video info. And drag the green knob to cut off the unwanted parts to reduce the video file size.

4. Split video into segments. Click Toolbox button at the bottom of the panel, and double-click Split button to make a splitting of your video, deciding how many segments you want to split your video or split video at how many seconds.

5. Crop the video frame size. Click Crop button under the video information. Tick the box of Enable Crop and you can see the original video on the left has a dashed box now. Drag the dotted frame freely to crop the video from left, right, top and bottom, to remove unnecessary borders to get the highlighted area. And you can preview the output effect on the right window.

Step 3: Click on the RUN button to reduce video now.

2. VLC

VLC is free media player that can do so many post editing works beyond your imagination, things like transcoding, cutting, cropping, adding subtitles, and even change your video size to a proper file size so that you can easily ad successfully uploaded online to YouTube or to your iPhone/android devices. You can also lower down the Bitrate and Quality in a way to reduce video size.

Pros: Free and fast – platforms-orientated.

Video File Reducer software, free download Windows 7

Cons: You does not know how much size exactly the processed file would be.

How to Reduce a Video Size by Lowering the Overall Bitrate in VLC

Step 1. Go to the conversion panel.

Launch VLC and click Media > Convert / Save > +Add button and select the video.

Step 2. Choose a compression codec/format.

Click the arrow down button and choose H264 codec or drag the bar down to other possibilities - iPod, Android, YouTube. (H264 and HEVC/H265 is by far the most efficient compressing codec).

Step 3. Tweak the bit-rate, video size, quality, frame rate etc.

To make a video file smaller in VLC, you can also go advanced by clicking the wrench icon to adjust the video and audio bitrate, quality and frame rate under encoding parameters. It also allows you to scale down the resolution by 1/4, 1/2, 3/4.

3. Handbrake

Handbrake is a robust open source video transcoding tool that many commercial software are designed and developed catching hot on its reels. In comparison with VLC, this tool gives more choice over codecs and formats both rare and professional. While comparing to Final Cut Pro and iMovie on macOS, it is also lightweight with no more than 30MB in size which could be your ideal first choice to efficiently make a video file smaller with all media info crystal clear.

Pros: You can get a preview of the processed video to decide if its quality meet your requirement

Cons: You does not know how much size exactly, just as same as VLC.

How to Reduce Video Size in HandBrake

Step 1. Open a file in Handbrake.

You can either drop a file to the editing panel or click the 'File' choice - open a single video file. Choose the video.

Step 2. Adjust the parameters of this video.

You can change the video dimensions, set the video codec to H.265, change the FPS to lower ones, toggle the quality bar to lower quality etc.

Remember to choose the universal format 'MP4' as the output format.

Step 3. Click 'Start Encode' to process the video the way you like.

4. iMovie

Both Quicktime and iMovie can make a video file smaller. But Quicktime does not support tweaking the video by width or length. One can only choose to export video resolutions in lower 1080p, 720p, or 480p to achieve the reduction of the overall video size. However, in iMovie, you can do so many adjustments to shrink video file size by cutting/trimming the video content or lowering down the resolution and quality of the video upon sharing.

Pros: You get the estimated file size and video length crystal clear.

Cons: May consume a huge computer power to get things done.

How to Reduce Video File Size Using iMovie

Step 1. Open your video in iMovie.

You can then trim the video length and crop to reduce the video size/scale in iMovie very easily.

Step 2. Click the share button on the top right corner.

Step 3. Choose File.

Step 4. Change the video file size using iMovie free.

By selecting the format to 'Video and Audio' you'll be able to adjust the video resolution, quality, and processing speed. The estimated file size will be displayed according to your settings.

5. FreeConvert

During our tests, we are quite in love with this Freeconvert tool online as it provides all the possible means for changing a video file size – resize, change of codecs, change of video file size, etc. Users can reduce a video file size by video quality, bitrate, or video size, meaning you can even scale down a video to reduce file size.

Pros: You can apply multiple means combined.

Cons: Unfriendly for large video projects since it is working online and you cannot pause it.

How to Reduce Video Size Online in FreeConvert

Step 1. Go to Freeconvert.com.

Step 2. Tweak and preset video parameters.

There, you can choose the output format (MP4 recommended), video codec(H265 recommended). With different orientations - size, quality, bit-rate, you get different options.

Step 3. Upload a video as instructed by clicking the Choose File button.

You can either choose from your local folder, dropbox, google drive, or input a single URL.

Step 4. Click the compress now button to proceed and click Download MP4 button to save the video locally.

You'll have to wait for the video to be fully uploaded. And it will give a thoughtful notice telling you how much you've saved in total - 'You've saved xx%'

Tips for Reducing the Size of a Video

Before to figure out the issue 'How can we decrease the video size', we probably need to first make it clear that what determines a video size, then we can know where we will go and what we are going to do.

It is quite simple - the size of a video equals its duration multiplying its bitrate. There are possibly some newcomers who have little knowledge of video elements video bitrate. Video bitrate simply means how many bits one second duration of the video has. In some ways, one second video images have more bits, the size of video would be bigger but the video quality would be higher.

So if we want to decrease the size of a video, we have two ways to make it,

1. Shortening its duration

When we are shooting a video, mostly there must be some redundant shots. So we can remove such unwanted parts, shorten the duration, and make it smaller.

This is just one option, and the other one is breaking up the whole video file into multiple individual parts.

This is kind of silly, some of the friends probably think, since we have not reduced the video size at all by it. While in some situations, it would be the easiest way. For example, when we plan to share our videos on social media, we know that some social media has the limit for video size, and we can just cut them into multiple segments for uploading.

2. Lowering its bitrate

Well, you need to know that here lowering bitrate does not simply mean decreasing the bitrate of the video at all, but we suggest every second of the video conveys fewer bits. This is because, if we simply change the bitrate number of the video to be smaller, there might be image quality loss. Sacrificing image quality for smaller video size is definitely not what we want, right?

However, how can we change the bitrate, but not influencing the video quality, or as little as possible, at the same time?

Base on my personal experience and knowledge, still two options are on our list to try, cropping and video codec changing.

If the camera or other devices cover some needless views, when we are shooting a video, we can crop them and reduce the video size. While, if you think each scenery in the image is precious, you need the other option to help you, ie changing the video codec.

Video bitrate is determined by its resolution, frame rate, and its codec. While, if we change the resolution and frame rate directly, there is no doubt that it must lead to video quality loss. But changing the codec would have less influence on video quality or none at all.

Video codec helps us compress a video efficiently. While there are many types of the codec, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, H.265 (HEVC), VP8, VP9, XVID/DIVX, etc. And the compression efficiency of each codec differs. For now, H.265 would be the best. It has up to a 50% better compression ratio than the H.264 codec, which means it can save up to 50% video size compared to H.264.

So if you want to reduce video size by changing the video codec, H.265 would be a good choice. However, you need to know that H.265 has not been as popular as H.264, which means some applications are not compatible with it.

Well, these are pretty much all the methods that we can imagine to help you decrease video file size with much less quality loss.

On top of that, you must also know that in a video file, there are not just the video images, but also include some other types of data, such as the audio codec and audio data, captions, menus, chapters, and so on. Changing them can also help us make the whole video file smaller. However, mostly, they just take up a quite minimal amount of the whole video file, so in this post, we did not take them into consideration and discussion.





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