Do you want to shrink the file size of your videos so that they are smaller and easier to manage, transfer, or store? The good news is that you can actually do it by several means, but you should know a bit more about your options before you decide which one to use.
In particular, there are three ways that you can shrink the file size of your videos effectively – and each one is slightly different:
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Convert to a codec with better compression
Almost all the videos that you encounter are likely already compressed using the codec that is a part of their format. Newer codecs tend to have better compression rates, however, which is why converting your video to one of them could help you shrink its file size.
The main advantage of this option is that the quality of your video won’t be affected. However, at the same time, you will need to make sure the codec you choose to use is supported by the platform or device that you want to view the video on.
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Reduce the video bitrate – carefully
If converting the codec isn’t an option, you could try reducing the video bitrate instead. Because the bitrate is the amount of data that the video uses each second, reducing it will dramatically reduce the video file size.
Unfortunately, this option will affect the quality of your video, and as you start to reduce the bitrate, the quality will become poorer and compression artifacts will appear. That is why if you go down this route you will need to strike a balance between the video quality and bitrate – which may take a bit of trial and error.
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Extract short clips with important content
In cases when you’re only interested in a specific part of the video – you may want to extract that part and save it as its own video file. By doing so you’ll end up with a shorter clip that is a fraction of the file size of the original video.
As you can imagine, this option is very situational, and only applies if you’re not interested in the rest of the content of the video. However the situation itself is fairly common, and more often than not you may have videos with key information, highlights, or other important content that you need – but not really require the rest of it.
See how each of these options will help you to shrink the file size of your videos? It is up to you to decide which one is best depending on your circumstances, but you will need software to convert your videos, reduce the bitrate, or extract clips from them. For example, you could use Movavi Video Converter for Mac to accomplish all three.
As you may have realized there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution to reduce the file size of videos. However in most cases, you should be able to shrink the video file sizes by a significant margin – but in some cases, it will require some sacrifices in terms of quality or content.
