Reduce the size of short video from 30MB to something like 3MB for emailing

[Jan K.]

I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.

I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).

What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?

I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

[Nic]

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are
appropriate?
I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

Removing 'color' is a big one. Try using Curlew to rewrite the video to b/w.

[Newyana2]

"Jan K." <***@nie.ma.spamu.prosze.com> wrote

|I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
| I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
|

Avidemux. The UI is clunky, but it's very sophisticated.
You can snip it, resize it, etc. You can also try saving in
varying formats. It's like a graphic editor.

I'm on XP right now, so my version is a bit old (2012)
but I'll describe the basics: Drop the video in the window.
Set the Selection -- where to start and end. You can do
that by dragging the video position bar and clicking A for
the start point. Then drag again and click B for the end point.

Set the output options, which you may have to experiment with.
You probably want MPEG4 264 for video and copy for audio.

Then go to Video -> Filters. You can rotate, flip, crop,
resize. Avidemux will do the operations in order, like a
batch operation. Choose and configure each operation by
double-clicking the item, such as resizing. When done, close
that window.

With options configured, simply go to File -> Save. Choose
a location and save the video. That part is a bit confusing
because it does all operations and saves at once. You
might be inclined to look for a button that says something
like, "OK, edit the video". But you just do the edit by saving it.

Avidemux is very capable and easy to use once you get
the hang of it. It's also free, open source software.

[Jan K.]

Post by Newyana2
|I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
| I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
|
Avidemux. The UI is clunky, but it's very sophisticated.
You can snip it, resize it, etc. You can also try saving in
varying formats. It's like a graphic editor.
I'm on XP right now, so my version is a bit old (2012)
but I'll describe the basics: Drop the video in the window.
Set the Selection -- where to start and end. You can do
that by dragging the video position bar and clicking A for
the start point. Then drag again and click B for the end point.
Set the output options, which you may have to experiment with.
You probably want MPEG4 264 for video and copy for audio.
Then go to Video -> Filters. You can rotate, flip, crop,
resize. Avidemux will do the operations in order, like a
batch operation. Choose and configure each operation by
double-clicking the item, such as resizing. When done, close
that window.
With options configured, simply go to File -> Save. Choose
a location and save the video. That part is a bit confusing
because it does all operations and saves at once. You
might be inclined to look for a button that says something
like, "OK, edit the video". But you just do the edit by saving it.
Avidemux is very capable and easy to use once you get
the hang of it. It's also free, open source software.

Thank you for that advice above, all of which I followed just now.

1. I downloaded & installed the Avidemux from sourceforge
<https://sourceforge.net/projects/avidemux/files/latest/download>
Name: Avidemux_2.8.1 VC++ 64bits.exe
Size: 39995334 bytes (38 MiB)
SHA256: DD962BC788D7D955B04E163E7E1A6620B573ADC379BF2EA2A2C25585782B4DCA
It installed by default into C:\Program Files\Avidemux 2.8 VC++ 64bits\
[x]Avidemux VC++ 64 bits (87.29MB)
[_]Dev files (development files if you want to write plugins)
2. I moved the 3 startmenu shortcuts to my taskbar pinned-folder menu
C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Avidemux 2.8 VC++ 64bits
avidemux.lnk (avidemux.exe)
avidemux_jobs.lnk (avidemux_jobs.exe)
Uninstall Avidemux VC++ 64bits.lnk (Uninstall Avidemux VC++ 64bits.exe)
3. I ran GSpot on the video which reported the following basic information
<http://gspot.headbands.com/>
Size 27.4 MB (28,059 KB / 28,733,331 bytes)
Length 0:13.263, Frms 396, kbps 17075, Qf 0.274
Pics/s 30.000, Frames/s 30.000
Codec avc1, Name H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
Audio mp4a: MPEG-4 AAC LC, 48000Hz 256 kb/s tot , stereo (2/0)
Container mp42: MP4 v2 [ISO 14496-14]
isom: MP4 Base Media v1 [IS0 14496-12:2003]
Recommended Display Size: 1920 x 1080
4. I started Avidemux & dropped the video into the Avidemux window
5. I set the "A start" at the beginning & the "B end" at 8 seconds
6. The Avidemux "Output Format" defaulted to "MKV Muxer" with choices of
AVI Muxer, Dummy Muxer, FLV Muxer, MKV Muxer, MOV Muxer, MP4 Muxer,
Mpeg TS Muxer(ff), Mpeg-PS Muxer(ff), Video Only, WebM Muxer
7. I have no idea which to pick but I didn't need audio so I set it to
Video Only
8. In the "Video Output" were a lot of choices
Copy,(FF)HuffYUV,DV(ffmpeg),FFV1,FLV1(flash),HEVC(x265),Mjpeg Encoder,
Mpeg2(ff),Mpeg4ASP(xfid4),Mpeg4AVC(x264),NvidiaH264,NvidiaHEVC,
UtVideo(ffmpeg),VP9(libvpx),Yv12 Encoder,null
9. In the "Audio Output (1 track)" were also lots of choices
Copy,AAC (FDK),AAC (lav),AC3 (Aften),AC3 (lav),MP2 (Twolame),
MP2 (lav),MP3 (lame),Opus Encoder,PCM,Vorbis
10 The closest to your suggestion I could find are the following
Video Output = Mpeg4 AVC (x264)
Audio Output = Copy
11 I clicked the menu item for "Avidemux 2.8.1: Video > Filters"
which brought up the "Video Filter Manager" which has too many
options to list here, but none seemed aimed at reducing size.
12 With no filters set I clicked "Avidemux 2.8.1: File > Save"
which saved to "filename.raw" (which I had not expected).

I never heard of a "raw" format (which tried to open in Irfanview).
I ran GSpot on the raw file <http://gspot.headbands.com/>
Size 12.0 MB (12,317 KB / 12,613,296 bytes)
Length 0:13.263, Frms 396, kbps 17075, Qf 0.274
Pics/s blank, Frames/s blank
Codec H264, Name H.264/AVC
Audio blank
Container MPEG Elementary Video << { 1 vid }

I renamed "raw" to "mp4" so that it opened in "MPC-BE 1.6.11 (build 0)"
<https://github.com/Aleksoid1978/MPC-BE/releases/tag/1.6.11>

Can I get it down to about 3MB instead of 12MB?
What other options give me the most bang for the buck to shrink it?

[Newyana2]

"Jan K." <***@nie.ma.spamu.prosze.com> wrote|

| 10 The closest to your suggestion I could find are the following
| Video Output = Mpeg4 AVC (x264)
| Audio Output = Copy

I think that's what I've typically used. For output I used
MP4 Muxer on a sample just now. It's an mp4 video that's 23.5 MB.
1280x720. 3:07.

I didn't crop or cut any of the length, but I did resize it to
640x360. I'm guessing I could get it more compact
experimenting with formats, but I don't really know anything
about audio or video encoding, so I just try things. The result is
15 MB.

The first time I used Avidemux it was for a friend who had
a video of blue-footed boobies taken with an iPhone. The
video was sideways with extreme width vs height, and very
large size. So I rotated it upright, reduced the wxh, and
cropped out what wasn't necessary, going from a gigantic
video to 240x276px that could be sent in email. The video was
reduced from 220 MB to 4.4 MB.

So it really depends on what you need. Can you afford to crop
it? Can you afford to resize it smaller? Can you afford to reduce
the length?

If I understand you, you didn't reduce the play time -- the
overall video length. You can do that by setting A and B. The
A and B numbers under Selection should then show something
less than the whole video length.

Resize: Video Output, Filters, double-click swResize and select
new size. (Why sw? Beats me.) To crop do the same thing with
the crop option. For example, can you afford to snip 1oo pixels
off the right and left? That will reduce file size.

Basically, whatever reduces the overall number of pixels in a
frame x number of frames is going to reduce file size.

I just saved my test file as "bbbb" and it showed up as bbbb.mp4.
Maybe the trouble with yours was the output format?

[Jan K.]

Post by Newyana2
| 10 The closest to your suggestion I could find are the following
| Video Output = Mpeg4 AVC (x264)
| Audio Output = Copy
I think that's what I've typically used. For output I used
MP4 Muxer on a sample just now. It's an mp4 video that's 23.5 MB.
1280x720. 3:07.
I didn't crop or cut any of the length, but I did resize it to
640x360. I'm guessing I could get it more compact
experimenting with formats, but I don't really know anything
about audio or video encoding, so I just try things. The result is
15 MB.
The first time I used Avidemux it was for a friend who had
a video of blue-footed boobies taken with an iPhone. The
video was sideways with extreme width vs height, and very
large size. So I rotated it upright, reduced the wxh, and
cropped out what wasn't necessary, going from a gigantic
video to 240x276px that could be sent in email. The video was
reduced from 220 MB to 4.4 MB.
So it really depends on what you need. Can you afford to crop
it? Can you afford to resize it smaller? Can you afford to reduce
the length?
If I understand you, you didn't reduce the play time -- the
overall video length. You can do that by setting A and B. The
A and B numbers under Selection should then show something
less than the whole video length.
Resize: Video Output, Filters, double-click swResize and select
new size. (Why sw? Beats me.) To crop do the same thing with
the crop option. For example, can you afford to snip 1oo pixels
off the right and left? That will reduce file size.
Basically, whatever reduces the overall number of pixels in a
frame x number of frames is going to reduce file size.

I think I've got a lot of solutions, where the baby moves around so I can't
crop out anything but the baby didn't talk so I removed the audio and the
baby almost fell off the bed so I removed that part in the second half.

As you said, what you can do depends on what your start & end points are.

Almost all the tests I ran worked well except halving the video quality.
I did shrink the original 30MB 13-second video to 12MB by using the A:B
buttons in Avidemux and then I used HandBrake to change the format from
1080p to 720p and to 480p which shrank the size appreciably.

The ffmpeg options also shrank the video file size drastically, so in the
end they all work to shrink the video down without losing usable quality.

The names are random but I won't change them for this report because I
already reported the names in the prior tests, so this is what I got.
03/29/2024 09:23 PM 95,895 20240325.raw-1.m4v
03/29/2024 08:37 PM 334,564 halfsize.mp4
03/29/2024 09:43 PM 644,948 480p.mp4
03/29/2024 08:47 PM 997,884 cv_output.mp4
03/29/2024 08:33 PM 997,884 output.mp4
03/29/2024 09:42 PM 1,812,453 720p.mp4
03/29/2024 07:19 PM 12,613,296 20240325.raw.mp4
03/25/2024 07:58 PM 28,733,331 20240325_original.mp4

a. The original is 29MB at 13 seconds long (20240325_original.mp4).
b. The Avidemux AB-trim is 13MB at 9 seconds (20240325.raw.mp4).
c. That raw converted with ffmpeg to H265 was 1MB (output.mp4)
ffmpeg -i 20240325.raw.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output.mp4
d. That raw converted with ffmpeg halved was 335KB (halfsize.mp4)
ffmpeg -i 20240325.raw.mp4 -vf "scale=trunc(iw/4)*2:trunc(ih/4)*2" -c:v libx265 -crf 28 halfsize.mp4
e. The raw converted with Handbrake from 1080p to 720p is 2MB (720p.mp4).
f. The raw converted with Handbrake from 1080p to 480p is 644KB (480p.mp4).

All of the results I deemed usable except when I lowered the quality using
HandBrake from "Video Quality = 22" to "Video Quality = 44), which resulted
in the smallest file size (at 96KB) but that quality wasn't usable.

I think the approach I may take moving forward might be
1. Use Avidemux to trim the beginning and the end off (if possible).
2. Use ffmpeg to compress to the latest H265 codec (if possible).
3. If more is needed, then change the 1080p to 720p or 480p with HandBrake.

Does that sound like a decent plan for a typical home video shrink?

[Newyana2]

"Jan K." <***@nie.ma.spamu.prosze.com> wrote

| I think the approach I may take moving forward might be
| 1. Use Avidemux to trim the beginning and the end off (if possible).
| 2. Use ffmpeg to compress to the latest H265 codec (if possible).
| 3. If more is needed, then change the 1080p to 720p or 480p with
HandBrake.
|
| Does that sound like a decent plan for a typical home video shrink?

Avidemux can do #3. I don't know whether ffmpeg
can perform better compression. At this point you
know more than I do. :)

[Jan K.]

Post by Newyana2
| I think the approach I may take moving forward might be
| 1. Use Avidemux to trim the beginning and the end off (if possible).
| 2. Use ffmpeg to compress to the latest H265 codec (if possible).
| 3. If more is needed, then change the 1080p to 720p or 480p with
HandBrake.
|
| Does that sound like a decent plan for a typical home video shrink?
Avidemux can do #3. I don't know whether ffmpeg
can perform better compression. At this point you
know more than I do. :)

I tried so many things, most of which worked, that it's all a blur.
I think this may be a decent approach summarizing all the help I got.

1. Load the video into Losslesscut (or Avidemux) to trim as needed.
2. Convert with ffmpeg (or Avidemux or Handbrake) to H.265 compression.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output_1.mp4
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "scale=trunc(iw/4)*2:trunc(ih/4)*2" -c:v libx265 -crf 28 output_2.mp4
3. Convert 1080p to 720p/480p with Handbrake (or ShutterEncoder)

[Carlos E.R.]

Post by Jan K.

Post by Newyana2
| I think the approach I may take moving forward might be
| 1. Use Avidemux to trim the beginning and the end off (if possible).
| 2. Use ffmpeg to compress to the latest H265 codec (if possible).
| 3. If more is needed, then change the 1080p to 720p or 480p with
HandBrake.
|
| Does that sound like a decent plan for a typical home video shrink?
  Avidemux can do #3. I don't know whether ffmpeg
can perform better compression. At this point you
know more than I do. :)

I tried so many things, most of which worked, that it's all a blur.
I think this may be a decent approach summarizing all the help I got.
1. Load the video into Losslesscut (or Avidemux) to trim as needed.
2. Convert with ffmpeg (or Avidemux or Handbrake) to H.265 compression.
  ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output_1.mp4
  ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "scale=trunc(iw/4)*2:trunc(ih/4)*2" -c:v
libx265 -crf 28 output_2.mp4

You can do that in a single step with ffmpeg.

Post by Jan K.
3. Convert 1080p to 720p/480p with Handbrake (or ShutterEncoder)

I think you can do this also in the previous step on a single ffmpeg pass.

You just have to find the correct incantation.

[Carlos E.R.]

Post by Jan K.
What other options give me the most bang for the buck to shrink it?

Reduce frames per second, perhaps.

[Reinhard Skarbal]

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

Hi

Take the freeware handbrake from https://handbrake.fr
It has an Gui. This GUI offers sliders to reduce the
quality and resolution. You can also conert to x264 and
x265.

Regards
Reinhard

[Jan K.]

Post by Reinhard Skarbal

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

Hi
Take the freeware handbrake from https://handbrake.fr
It has an Gui. This GUI offers sliders to reduce the
quality and resolution. You can also conert to x264 and
x265.

Thank you for that suggestion of using Handbrake, where in the past I used
to use something called Super for video-format conversions, but not sizes.

1. As suggested, I picked up HandBrake 1.7.3 from https://handbrake.fr/
https://github.com/HandBrake/HandBrake/releases/download/1.7.3/HandBrake-1.7.3-x86_64-Win_GUI.exe
Name: HandBrake-1.7.3-x86_64-Win_GUI.exe
Size: 23646760 bytes (22 MiB)
SHA256: F80829D30029BA255675929587F2B6665DE2790E52B24845B92D1427C8893264

2. Installing HandBrake put a desktop icon "HandBrake.lnk" with a target of
C:\Program Files\HandBrake\HandBrake.exe which I moved to my taskbar folder.
But when I ran HandBrake it complained I needed a newer .NET Framework.
"The Windows User interface requires Microsoft .NET Desktop Runtime 6.0"
https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/thank-you/runtime-desktop-6.0.25-windows-x64-installer
https://download.visualstudio.microsoft.com/download/pr/52d6ef78-d4ec-4713-9e01-eb8e77276381/e58f307cda1df61e930209b13ecb47a4/windowsdesktop-runtime-6.0.25-win-x64.exe
Name: windowsdesktop-runtime-6.0.25-win-x64.exe
Size: 57436096 bytes (54 MiB)
SHA256: C7B9C0DEA9D686486921AEA9DFB4F86C63D4B11D739FC26BEDB55BE0D96CF0FB
But when I installed that, I ran out of disk space.

3. I checked to see which .NET Framework I already had installed.
https://www.blacklightsoftware.com/blog/posts/2023/april/how-to-check-which-net-framework-version-is-installed/
Which suggests this registry query from the Windows admin prompt
Win+R cmd [control+shift+enter]
reg query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Net Framework Setup\NDP" /s
Which seems to show I have version 2 and version 4 installed.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Net Framework Setup\NDP\CDF\v4.0
SMSvcHostPath REG_SZ C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Net Framework Setup\NDP\v2.0.50727\1038

4. So I installed an older HandBrake to work with that older .NET Framework
Name: HandBrake-1.0.7-x86_64-Win_GUI.exe
Size: 10468271 bytes (10222 KiB)
SHA256: 3D63E96BA3E0E538D6D7FCE86070FA5621B2BCD89123D53D25BBE625B7E7C4BA

5. As noted, HandBrake has a lot of options, but I only changed these.
Video Quality was 22. I changed it to half that, at 44.
Video Codec was H264 (x264). I changed it to H265 (x265).
Then I pressed the HandBrake "Start Encode" green button.

6. That shrunk the Avidemux raw file to less than a tenth in file size.
03/29/2024 07:19 PM 12,613,296 20240325.raw.mp4
03/29/2024 09:23 PM 95,895 20240325.raw-1.m4v
Where it changed it to an "m4v" which opened up in Windows using VLC.
But the quality was bad compared to the ffmpeg results run prior.

7. I decided to try again, but this time changing the original 1920x1080
to something smaller, where Handbrake needs both the X & Y pixels
(which I had to look up as I don't know what the pixel ratios are).
https://typito.com/blog/video-resolutions/
SD (Standard Definition) 480p 4:3 640 x 480
HD (High Definition) 720p 16:9 1280 x 720
Full HD (FHD) 1080p 16:9 1920 x 1080
QHD (Quad HD) 1440p 16:9 2560 x 1440
2K video 1080p 1:1.77 2048 x 1080
4K video or Ultra HD (UHD) 4K or 2160p 1:1.9 3840 x 2160
8K video or Full Ultra HD 8K or 4320p 16:9 7680 x 4320

8. I changed the original 1080p frame size to 720p (16:9,1280x720),
and then I also changed the original to 480p (4:3,640x480).

HandBrake 1.0.7 (2017040900)-64bit:Picture tab
Original Width=1920, Original Height=1080
720p Width=1280, 720p Height=720 > Start Encode > 720p.mp4
480p Width=640, 480p Height=480 > Start Encode > 480p.mp4

9. The resulting file sizes were
03/29/2024 07:19 PM 12,613,296 20240325.raw.mp4
03/29/2024 09:43 PM 644,948 480p.mp4
03/29/2024 09:42 PM 1,812,453 720p.mp4
Which can be compared in file size to previous outputs.
03/29/2024 08:47 PM 997,884 cv_output.mp4
03/29/2024 08:37 PM 334,564 halfsize.mp4
03/29/2024 08:33 PM 997,884 output.mp4

Overall, the quality of both the 480p and 720p were just fine for
my purposes of sending in email, where the 720p is about 15% of
the 1080p file size & the 480p is about 5% of the 1080p file size.

Thank you for the suggestion of using HandBrake, where in my
few tests above, reducing the pixel ratio seems to work well.

[Fokke Nauta]

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

Why not use WeTransfer?

Fokke

[mick]

Post by Fokke Nauta

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

Why not use WeTransfer?
Fokke

+1
Send the 30mb video to each recipient via WeTransfer. It is free to
use for 2GB of data, each one will get an email to download the file
within seven days after which it is deleted from WeTransfer.

[candycanearter07]

Post by mick

Post by Fokke Nauta

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

Why not use WeTransfer?
Fokke

+1
Send the 30mb video to each recipient via WeTransfer. It is free to
use for 2GB of data, each one will get an email to download the file
within seven days after which it is deleted from WeTransfer.

Another good one is 0x0.st.

[VanguardLH]

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby
that I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need
it ~3MB.
I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used
Irfanview to shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing,
quality, compression).
What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is
designed to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods
are appropriate?
I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or
change the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't
need), or what?

When you send your video-laden e-mail, only 1 copy gets sent to your
SMTP server. However, a copy of the e-mail gets sent separately to each
recipient. For N recipients, your e-mail gets sent out N times. You
already expressed concern about exceeding per-message quota limits for
your recipients, but each will have to consume bandwidth to get the big
e-mail. A short polling interval in their client could result in
aborting the current mail session to start a new one which means any
e-mails not yet completed for retrieval or not yet started in the
current mail session get abort when the next mail session is forcibly
started. They end up continually retrying to download the same e-mails.
There are some users still on dial-up. Not sure you'll get a 30 MB
video file down to 3 MB. Some e-mail services, especially freebies,
have a limit of 10 MB per attachment (e.g., Hotmail/Outlook.com/Live).
I remember trialing some free e-mail providers that had only 5 MB for
total message size (as well as only a dozen messages per day since they
were a lure to show you their service, but you really needed to pay to
get a usable service tier, yet some folks use them as that is all they
need).

https://www.outlook-apps.com/maximum-email-size/

Why not upload the video to online storage to let your recipients get it
from there? Instead of wasting space on their computer to store your
big e-mail, the time for bandwidth to download it, and it should be
their choice whether to see it or not, put it online at a file server
(e.g., OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc) with a URL pointing to it
in your e-mail. That would be more polite to your recipients. They get
a tiny e-mail, and /they/ choose whether or not to get it.

https://www.techradar.com/best/best-free-cloud-storage-service
https://www.lifewire.com/free-cloud-storage-1356638

Compressing a video file into a .zip file won't help much, if at all.
You could further reduce the compression of the video file itself by
opening in a video editor (e.g., Avidemux) to save at a higher
compression level, or recode using a different codec. Whatever you do,
you need to ensure that ALL of your recipients can play your video.

How to Use Avidemux to Compress Your Videos

In his first test, his original 6,743 KB video was output to a 1,545 KB
file. That compress down to 23% the original size. All things being
equal, that might bring your 30 MB video down to 6.9 MB. Eh, still
might exceed the per-message quota limit at some e-mail providers. In
his 2nd test, the 6,743 KB video file got reduced to just 254 KB, but
quality really sucks. You can play with Avidemux to get the output file
size you want while gauging just how much crappier it looks.

I haven't used Avidemux for many years, and it's not on my current
own-built desktop, but it's definitely powerful, but also a bit
daunting. That's why you might want to hunt for Youtube videos having
others show you how to use Avidemux. There might also be other online
tutorials on using it.

[Jan K.]

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.

Try https://ffmpeg.org/
It is a command line tool which needn't be installed. You have
to find the correct command line parameters, but a Google
search with "ffmpeg reduce video size" will give you the
needed information.

Thanks for that advice to try ffmpeg to shrink a video for email.
After a few dead ends (eg https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffmpeg/files/)
I found a compiled Windows binary and ran the following test steps.

1. I went to the ffmpeg.org suggested location for Windows binaries
https://ffmpeg.org/download.html#build-windows
Which gave me two different choices
https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/
https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases

It was hard to choose, for example, what's the difference between
ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip at 57.3 MB
ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl.zip at 134 MB

So I arbitrarily picked the smaller of the two files above.
https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases/download/latest/ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip
Name: ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip
Size: 60052525 bytes (57 MiB)
SHA256: 447EA59D610B9DC9F240EC933D761F717B41D28E7EC62C4A42F86CADCF21D93C
Which extracted to a tree of which these were in the "bin" directory.
ffprobe.exe, ffmpeg.exe, ffplay.exe
swresample-5.dll, avutil-59.dll, avdevice-61.dll, avcodec-61.dll
avfilter-10.dll, postproc-58.dll, avformat-61.dll, swscale-8.dll

2. I copied the 12MB 8-second-long RAW result from Avidemux & googled.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ffmpeg+reduce+video+size
Which found this fancy new compression as the first search result.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/28803/how-can-i-reduce-a-videos-size-with-ffmpeg
Which suggested this brand new (as of 2020) compression command.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output.mp4
Which I ran as follows
ffmpeg -i 20240325.raw.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output.mp4
With the result being quite a bit smaller in total file size.
03/29/2024 02:19 PM 12,613,296 20240325.raw.mp4
03/29/2024 02:33 PM 997,884 output.mp4

3. There were also suggestions to reduce the frame size in half.
ffmpeg -i 20240325.raw.mp4 -vf "scale=trunc(iw/4)*2:trunc(ih/4)*2" -c:v libx265 -crf 28 halfsize.mp4
Which had an even more drastic effect on the total file size.
03/29/2024 08:37 PM 334,564 halfsize.mp4

GSpot shows it changed the recommended display size.
12,613,296 20240325.mp4 Recommended Display Size 1920x1080
997,884 output.mp4 Recommended Display Size 1920x1080
334,564 halfsize.mp4 Recommended Display Size 960x540

In that stackexchange were many more options some of which I had
tested, but the results already are small enough to email now.

Thanks for helping me out in reducing video to emailable sizes.

[Big Al]

Post by Jan K.

 > I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
 > I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
Try https://ffmpeg.org/
It is a command line tool which needn't be installed. You have
to find the correct command line parameters, but a Google
search with "ffmpeg reduce video size" will give you the
needed information.

Thanks for that advice to try ffmpeg to shrink a video for email.
After a few dead ends (eg https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffmpeg/files/)
I found a compiled Windows binary and ran the following test steps.
1. I went to the ffmpeg.org suggested location for Windows binaries
  https://ffmpeg.org/download.html#build-windows
  Which gave me two different choices
  https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/
  https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases
  It was hard to choose, for example, what's the difference between
  ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip at 57.3 MB
  ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl.zip at 134 MB
  So I arbitrarily picked the smaller of the two files above.
https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases/download/latest/ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip
  Name: ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip
  Size: 60052525 bytes (57 MiB)
  SHA256: 447EA59D610B9DC9F240EC933D761F717B41D28E7EC62C4A42F86CADCF21D93C
  Which extracted to a tree of which these were in the "bin" directory.
  ffprobe.exe, ffmpeg.exe, ffplay.exe
  swresample-5.dll, avutil-59.dll, avdevice-61.dll, avcodec-61.dll
  avfilter-10.dll, postproc-58.dll, avformat-61.dll, swscale-8.dll
2. I copied the 12MB 8-second-long RAW result from Avidemux & googled.
  https://www.google.com/search?q=ffmpeg+reduce+video+size
  Which found this fancy new compression as the first search result.
  https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/28803/how-can-i-reduce-a-videos-size-with-ffmpeg
  Which suggested this brand new (as of 2020) compression command.
  ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output.mp4
  Which I ran as follows
  ffmpeg -i 20240325.raw.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output.mp4
  With the result being quite a bit smaller in total file size.
  03/29/2024  02:19 PM        12,613,296 20240325.raw.mp4
  03/29/2024  02:33 PM           997,884 output.mp4
3. There were also suggestions to reduce the frame size in half.
  ffmpeg -i 20240325.raw.mp4 -vf "scale=trunc(iw/4)*2:trunc(ih/4)*2" -c:v libx265 -crf 28 halfsize.mp4
  Which had an even more drastic effect on the total file size.
  03/29/2024  08:37 PM           334,564 halfsize.mp4
  GSpot shows it changed the recommended display size.
  12,613,296 20240325.mp4 Recommended Display Size 1920x1080
     997,884 output.mp4   Recommended Display Size 1920x1080
     334,564 halfsize.mp4 Recommended Display Size 960x540
In that stackexchange were many more options some of which I had
tested, but the results already are small enough to email now.
Thanks for helping me out in reducing video to emailable sizes.

The real test, and I'd be interested in knowing, is what looks good?
How far could you go and still have a usable video. You have a 1G 1920x102 and a 1/3G @ 1/2 the
size. Did the smaller one look that bad?

[Paul]

Post by Jan K.

 > I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
 > I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
Try https://ffmpeg.org/
It is a command line tool which needn't be installed. You have
to find the correct command line parameters, but a Google
search with "ffmpeg reduce video size" will give you the
needed information.

Thanks for that advice to try ffmpeg to shrink a video for email.
After a few dead ends (eg https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffmpeg/files/)
I found a compiled Windows binary and ran the following test steps.
1. I went to the ffmpeg.org suggested location for Windows binaries
  https://ffmpeg.org/download.html#build-windows
  Which gave me two different choices
  https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/
  https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases
  It was hard to choose, for example, what's the difference between
  ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip at 57.3 MB
  ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl.zip at 134 MB
 
  So I arbitrarily picked the smaller of the two files above.
  https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases/download/latest/ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip
  Name: ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip
  Size: 60052525 bytes (57 MiB)
  SHA256: 447EA59D610B9DC9F240EC933D761F717B41D28E7EC62C4A42F86CADCF21D93C
  Which extracted to a tree of which these were in the "bin" directory.
  ffprobe.exe, ffmpeg.exe, ffplay.exe
  swresample-5.dll, avutil-59.dll, avdevice-61.dll, avcodec-61.dll
  avfilter-10.dll, postproc-58.dll, avformat-61.dll, swscale-8.dll
2. I copied the 12MB 8-second-long RAW result from Avidemux & googled.
  https://www.google.com/search?q=ffmpeg+reduce+video+size
  Which found this fancy new compression as the first search result.
  https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/28803/how-can-i-reduce-a-videos-size-with-ffmpeg
  Which suggested this brand new (as of 2020) compression command.
  ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output.mp4
  Which I ran as follows
  ffmpeg -i 20240325.raw.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output.mp4
  With the result being quite a bit smaller in total file size.
  03/29/2024  02:19 PM        12,613,296 20240325.raw.mp4
  03/29/2024  02:33 PM           997,884 output.mp4
3. There were also suggestions to reduce the frame size in half.
  ffmpeg -i 20240325.raw.mp4 -vf "scale=trunc(iw/4)*2:trunc(ih/4)*2" -c:v libx265 -crf 28 halfsize.mp4
  Which had an even more drastic effect on the total file size.
  03/29/2024  08:37 PM           334,564 halfsize.mp4
  GSpot shows it changed the recommended display size.
  12,613,296 20240325.mp4 Recommended Display Size 1920x1080
     997,884 output.mp4   Recommended Display Size 1920x1080
     334,564 halfsize.mp4 Recommended Display Size 960x540
In that stackexchange were many more options some of which I had
tested, but the results already are small enough to email now.
Thanks for helping me out in reducing video to emailable sizes.

For the Gyan one, you obviously want the statically compiled one.

The larger static package, there are no DLLs to lug around.
You can drop ffmpeg.exe or ffprobe.exe into your work folder
and go to work.

The package which uses EXE+DLLs means some sort of "install strategy"
on Windows, is better for it.

I always use the static ones.

*******

When you ask a question about a video, you start with

ffprobe filename.ext

Copy out the video stream and audio stream lines with their
CODEC declaration.

Then people in the audience, can tell you whether the
video is already compressed or not. When a video is already
compressed, making improvements on compression is harder,
and additional decompress-recompress steps, degrades the content,
as the compressors tend to be lossy. The video can look
"a little bit soft", like a bad soap opera, with too much
"rough handling".

There are lossless CODECs (HUFFYUV), but that one only
reduces a video to 66% of original size. That's used for
archival storage, and is not a distribution strategy.
Whereas H264 or H265 lossy CODECs, they could give
100:1 compression. Your improvements imply the source
video was already compressed (and while hardware support
for compression was poor 20 years ago, it's pretty good now).

Compression in hardware, takes about 1.5 billion instructions
per second, to do in real time (ballpark number). And that
amount of effort, means things like USB video capture sticks
may not be ice cold to the touch :-) One core on your smartphone
would be pretty busy. But the alternative (uncompressed), would burn
through flash like the clappers, and then you'd need
terabytes of NAND to store it all. Just about everything
today, has already been compressed. Digital TV transmissions
are compressed (and ready to write to disk).

Video is unlikely to be "completely RAW", because the standards
for that are "poor to nonexistent" and working that way is a
recipe for hair loss. If a piece of equipment is claiming that,
use the ffprobe and see what it is really doing.

Paul

[Jan K.]

Post by Paul

Post by Jan K.
1. I went to the ffmpeg.org suggested location for Windows binaries
  https://ffmpeg.org/download.html#build-windows
  Which gave me two different choices
  https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/
  https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases
  It was hard to choose, for example, what's the difference between
  ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip at 57.3 MB
  ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl.zip at 134 MB

For the Gyan one, you obviously want the statically compiled one.
The larger static package, there are no DLLs to lug around.
You can drop ffmpeg.exe or ffprobe.exe into your work folder
and go to work.

Thank you for noticing my confusion when I was confronted with ffmpeg
binaries without any secret decoder ring to know how to choose from them.

I first looked at the gyan site but was thoroughly confused just staring at
it and trying to make any sense out of it, so I went to the github instead.

The github had a zip and a shared zip, but it gave me no clue how to choose
between them. At least you gave me a reason on the guyan site.

1. Going back to that confusing gyan site to learn from your wisdom
https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/

There are three sections.
a. Master builds
b. Release builds
c. Tools

Where I have no idea what they are talking about.

2. It's almost impossible to find the binary, because there are so many.
I searched for the word "static" since you had mentioned static
builds are better (and I'm fine with not having to deal with DLLs).

The word "static" only shows up twice, the second time being here:
"All builds are 64-bit, static and licensed as GPLv3; the release
full variant is also available as a shared build with development
files. A set of supplementary tools are available in the tools
section. These are updated infrequently and are licensed as LGPLv3."

So it seems everything is static so I still don't know what to get.

3. However, that description implies that the previous "shared" mystery
is apparently that the shared build "shares" developement files,
which of course I don't need.
(So now I know which of the github builds to get - i.e., non shared.)

4. Just above that description is this explanation of the gyan builds.
"the essentials build variant contains commonly used libraries,
whereas the full build variant also contains most of the remainder.
See the libraries section for a list. All variants contain all
internal components available for Windows."

So I still don't know which binary to get from the guyan site, where I
would agree with you that I don't want separate DLLs if I don't have to.

[Frankie]

Post by Jan K.
3. However, that description implies that the previous "shared" mystery
is apparently that the shared build "shares" developement files,
which of course I don't need.
(So now I know which of the github builds to get - i.e., non shared.)

Your interpretation may be wrong because the non shared binaries are larger
than the shared, so whatever is shared, makes it a lot smaller download.

[Jan K.]

Post by Frankie

Post by Jan K.
3. However, that description implies that the previous "shared" mystery
is apparently that the shared build "shares" developement files,
which of course I don't need.
(So now I know which of the github builds to get - i.e., non shared.)

Your interpretation may be wrong because the non shared binaries are larger
than the shared, so whatever is shared, makes it a lot smaller download.

Good catch. My interpretation was wrong for the reason you said.
Thank you.

Since the github ffmpeg worked, I gave up on trying to understand the gyan
web page, although I see Paul has figured it out for the rest of us.

It's a good thing too because ffmpeg seems to be able to do everything
anyway, so I might use a process in the future kind of like these steps.

1. Load the video into Losslesscut (or Avidemux) to trim as needed
(or at least decide timepoints to trim to using ffmpeg commands).
2. Convert with ffmpeg (or Avidemux or Handbrake) to H.265 compression.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output_1.mp4
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "scale=trunc(iw/4)*2:trunc(ih/4)*2" -c:v libx265 -crf 28 output_2.mp4
3. Convert 1080p to 720p/480p with Handbrake (or ffmpeg or ShutterEncoder)

I probably could trim with ffmpeg so all I'd really need to do is look at
the video and figure out the start and stop points to trim with ffmpeg.
https://shotstack.io/learn/use-ffmpeg-to-trim-video/
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -ss 00:05:10 -to 00:15:30 -c:v copy -c:a copy output2.mp4

The above command uses '-to' to specify an exact time to cut to from the
starting position. The cut video will be from '00:05:10 to 00:15:30',
resulting in a 10 minutes and 20 seconds video.

If you specify a time '-to' that is longer than the input video, e.g. '-to
00:35:00' when the input video is 20 minutes long, the cut video will end
where the input video ends. If you specify a '-to' that is smaller than
'-ss', then the command won't run.

You'll get the following error:
Error: -to value smaller than -ss; aborting.

Note that if you specify '-ss' before '-i', '-to' will have the same effect
as '-t', i.e. it will act as a duration.

Then I need to convert the 1080p to either 720p or 480p with ffmpeg.
https://superuser.com/questions/714804/converting-video-from-1080p-to-720p-with-smallest-quality-loss-using-ffmpeg

Recommended width and height for videos with 16:9 aspect ratios:
Best Choice: 2nd Best: 3rd Best:
Multiples of 16 Multiples of 8 Multiples of 4
1920 x 1080 1792 x 1008 1856 x 1044
1280 x 720 1152 x 648 1216 x 684
1024 x 576 896 x 504 1088 x 612
768 x 432 640 x 360 960 x 540
512 x 288 384 x 216 832 x 468
256 x 144 128 x 72 704 x 396
576 x 324
448 x 252
320 x 180
192 x 108

Given that, this is the command they recommend to convert to 780p:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf scale=w=1280:h=720:force_original_aspect_ratio=decrease:force_divisible_by=2 -sws_flags lanczos output3.mp4

[Bill W]

Post by Jan K.

Post by Frankie

Post by Jan K.
3. However, that description implies that the previous "shared" mystery
is apparently that the shared build "shares" developement files,
which of course I don't need.
(So now I know which of the github builds to get - i.e., non shared.)

Your interpretation may be wrong because the non shared binaries are larger
than the shared, so whatever is shared, makes it a lot smaller download.

Good catch. My interpretation was wrong for the reason you said.
Thank you.
Since the github ffmpeg worked, I gave up on trying to understand the gyan
web page, although I see Paul has figured it out for the rest of us.
It's a good thing too because ffmpeg seems to be able to do everything
anyway, so I might use a process in the future kind of like these steps.
1. Load the video into Losslesscut (or Avidemux) to trim as needed
(or at least decide timepoints to trim to using ffmpeg commands).
2. Convert with ffmpeg (or Avidemux or Handbrake) to H.265 compression.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output_1.mp4
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "scale=trunc(iw/4)*2:trunc(ih/4)*2" -c:v libx265 -crf
28 output_2.mp4
3. Convert 1080p to 720p/480p with Handbrake (or ffmpeg or ShutterEncoder)
I probably could trim with ffmpeg so all I'd really need to do is look at
the video and figure out the start and stop points to trim with ffmpeg.
https://shotstack.io/learn/use-ffmpeg-to-trim-video/
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -ss 00:05:10 -to 00:15:30 -c:v copy -c:a copy output2.mp4
The above command uses '-to' to specify an exact time to cut to from the
starting position. The cut video will be from '00:05:10 to 00:15:30',
resulting in a 10 minutes and 20 seconds video.
If you specify a time '-to' that is longer than the input video, e.g. '-to
00:35:00' when the input video is 20 minutes long, the cut video will end
where the input video ends. If you specify a '-to' that is smaller than
'-ss', then the command won't run.
Error: -to value smaller than -ss; aborting.
Note that if you specify '-ss' before '-i', '-to' will have the same effect
as '-t', i.e. it will act as a duration.
Then I need to convert the 1080p to either 720p or 480p with ffmpeg.
https://superuser.com/questions/714804/converting-video-from-1080p-to-720p-wit
h-smallest-quality-loss-using-ffmpeg
Multiples of 16 Multiples of 8 Multiples of 4
1920 x 1080 1792 x 1008 1856 x 1044
1280 x 720 1152 x 648 1216 x 684
1024 x 576 896 x 504 1088 x 612
768 x 432 640 x 360 960 x 540
512 x 288 384 x 216 832 x 468
256 x 144 128 x 72 704 x 396
576 x 324
448 x 252
320 x 180
192 x 108
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf
scale=w=1280:h=720:force_original_aspect_ratio=decrease:force_divisible_by=2
-sws_flags lanczos output3.mp4

I have to know. Are you Arlen’s sister? Daughter? Are you really just Arlen
with a new persona and gender? It’s too hard to believe that there could be
two people on this earth with the same level of obsession with freeware.

[David Catterall]

Post by Bill W
I have to know. Are you Arlen’s sister? Daughter? Are you really just Arlen
with a new persona and gender?

The same question occurred to me! :-D

But, there again, how do we know that Arlen was Arlen? I reckon that
it’s been Jessica Fletcher all the time. Dreadful creature: wherever she
goes, somebody gets murdered ... .

D.

[Scott Lurndal]

Post by David Catterall
But, there again, how do we know that Arlen was Arlen?

Arlen said he/she went by a different nym every January 1st for privacy
reasons and Arlen never hid from intelligent people since his stated goal
was to hide from robotic aggregators (which have only gotten more powerful
over time).

There were always the moronic trolls like BillW who claimed everyone was
Arlen but those morons never understood he posted the same images of his
unique home screens and vehicles and homes in all his posts.

He wasn't hiding from them (even though trolls like BillW exclaimed with
glee that he found the easter egg that a retarded blind person couldn't
miss because Arlen never hid who he was).

Retarded trolls like BillW masturbated over Arlen's posts, finding the
easter eggs that were left in the open for these retards, in that Arlen was
never hidden where these retarded trolls like BillW claim that they 'found'
Arlen - who was never hidden from anyone who owned an IQ above about 30.

And yes, I am Arlen. Everyone is Arlen to all retards like BillW is who
stalk Arlen and Snit and Dustin and Dave Cook and all the others who don't
hide from them even though the retards can't tell the difference.

In fact, the retard BillW is going to masturbate right now that he was
mentioned in this post a half dozen times - which is all the trolls want.

[Jan K.]

Post by Jan K.
1. Load the video into Losslesscut (or Avidemux) to trim as needed
(or at least decide timepoints to trim to using ffmpeg commands).
2. Convert with ffmpeg (or Avidemux or Handbrake) to H.265 compression.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output_1.mp4
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "scale=trunc(iw/4)*2:trunc(ih/4)*2" -c:v libx265 -crf 28 output_2.mp4
3. Convert 1080p to 720p/480p with Handbrake (or ffmpeg or ShutterEncoder)

But you should do this all in one ffmpeg command because
every decoding and encoding means a quality loss and also
consumes unnecessary computing time.

That's good advice, which I hadn't thought of, but I agree with you.

Particularly because my use model is just about this simple.
a. I take videos on my phone that are far too big to send by email
b. I only need to snip them to about 10 seconds in length & shrink them
c. All I want is for the size & quality to be good enough to email

Keeping your advice in mind, I thought of writing a simple batch script.
i. When run, the batch script asks "What is your input file name?"
ii. Then it asks "What time period do you wish to trim?"
iii. And lastly, it asks "How much shrinking do you want to do?"

Rather than start from scratch, I googled for an existing batch script
where I'm not the first person to want to string ffmpeg commands.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/66419497/windows-cmd-batch-script-ffmpeg
@Echo Off
SetLocal EnableExtensions
Set "CMD=ffmpeg.exe -c:v ffv1 -level 3 -g 1 -coder 1 -context 1 -pix_fmt +"
Set "CMD=%CMD% -slices 24 -slicecrc 1 -report -c:a pcm_s24le"

For /R "input_folder" %%G In (*.mov *.mp4) Do (
Echo %%G
%CMD% -y "output_folder\%%~nG.mkv" -i "%%G"
If Not ErrorLevel 1 Del /A /F "%%G"
)

Luckily, that search also found this fantastic ffmpeg GUI site which
allows me to paste in my commands into a GUI that remembers them.
<https://corz.org/> "Find a cute FFmpeg command online?
Or get something finally working exactly the way you want?
Save it to a button and it's there whenever you need it."

Apparently "Corz ffe" is "An FFMPEG front-end for Windows" which
can create a button for each and every ffmpeg command you like most.
<https://corz.org/windows/software/ffe/>

1. I downloaded ffe v2.5.4.5 for Windows from the Corz web site.
https://corz.org/windows/software/ffe/#section-Download
https://corz.org/engine?section=windows&download=ffe%20v2.5.4.5.zip
Name: ffe v2.5.4.5.zip
Size: 811715 bytes (792 KiB)
SHA256: 285470471CB699EA7AD62297CD46C3AF7DB3F151274B074EED7B99E0FEA09C0D

2. I already had ffmpeg from the typical Windows binary locations.
https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases
https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/

3. You can drop ffe.exe into the same folder as ffmpeg.exe for instant use.
(I chose to keep them in separate places as ffe will ask you
where your FFmpeg binary is if it's not in the same folder.)

4. Launch ffe.exe and up pops the4 "ffe Ffmpeg front end" GUI.
The GUI seems extremely powerful where it will take me a while to
figure out how to add the following commands as a single command.

I don't know how to make the "button" that Corz ffe advertises I can make,
but when I figure it out, I'll want to string these three commands with it.

A. Trim the video to the most desired section (about 10 seconds).
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -ss 00:05:10 -to 00:15:30 -c:v copy -c:a copy output1.mp4
B. Convert to H.265 compression.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output2.mp4
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf "scale=trunc(iw/4)*2:trunc(ih/4)*2" -c:v libx265 -crf 28 output3.mp4
C. Convert 1080p to 720p/480p if further size reduction is still needed.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf scale=w=1280:h=720:force_original_aspect_ratio=decrease:force_divisible_by=2 -sws_flags lanczos output4.mp4

[Gordon Freeman]

Post by Jan K.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf
scale=w=1280:h=

720:force_original_aspect_ratio=decrease:force_divisible_

Post by Jan K.
by=2 -sws_flags lanczos output3.mp4

If you don't need the audio you can add the flag -an just before the
output file and it will strip out the audio channel.

Some people have mentioned reducing the frame rate to reduce size
but in fact this is rarely effective, because video codecs normally
just store the differences between successive frames; so if you
halve the framerate e.g. from 30fps to 15fps you end up with twice
as big a difference between each frame, which doubles the space each
one takes up, so the final video is about the same size but more
jerky.

A similar argument is sometimes made regarding reducing the video
resolution: since compression is lossy, you could just leave the
picture size unchanged and instead lower the bitrate to the desired
level, the codec will then throw away as much detail as it has to in
order to achieve that bitrate, effectively reducing the resolution
for you but in a more intelligent manner than if you do it manually.
This won't work in the most extreme cases of size reduction but is
generally fine if you just need to halve the bitrate.

[Paul]

Post by Jan K.

Post by Jan K.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vf
scale=w=1280:h=

720:force_original_aspect_ratio=decrease:force_divisible_

Post by Jan K.
by=2 -sws_flags lanczos output3.mp4

If you don't need the audio you can add the flag -an just before the
output file and it will strip out the audio channel.
Some people have mentioned reducing the frame rate to reduce size
but in fact this is rarely effective, because video codecs normally
just store the differences between successive frames; so if you
halve the framerate e.g. from 30fps to 15fps you end up with twice
as big a difference between each frame, which doubles the space each
one takes up, so the final video is about the same size but more
jerky.
A similar argument is sometimes made regarding reducing the video
resolution: since compression is lossy, you could just leave the
picture size unchanged and instead lower the bitrate to the desired
level, the codec will then throw away as much detail as it has to in
order to achieve that bitrate, effectively reducing the resolution
for you but in a more intelligent manner than if you do it manually.
This won't work in the most extreme cases of size reduction but is
generally fine if you just need to halve the bitrate.

You can change the "gait" of the video, by changing
the issuance of i:p:b. Normally, on 30FPS video, the gait
seems to be 15 frames before a "reference image" is
emitted. On 24FPS video, there are 12 frames per group of pictures.
Both of these intervals is half a second (why? who knows).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_picture_types

"The order in which the I, P and B frames are arranged is called the Group of pictures. "

Now, you *could* define a video, where every frame was
a key or reference frame, which would bloat the video
tremendously. A google will mention "All-I" video as
somehow virtuous.

To save space on a scene which is not changing, but you're
shooting video, the group of pictures goes as high as 600.
This means there is a key frame, followed by 599 incremental
frames.

It's possible to use the ffprobe command, and dump a video
as a series of "packets". And the packets have sizes, and if
you plot up the sizes on GNUPlot or in Excel or Libreoffice Calc,
you can see the "gait" as bumps in the graph. The I ones,
being bigger than a P or a B. You can evaluate what a scheme
is achieving this way (warning - the output file could be
too big for notepad, and the output may be intended in the
example, to be post-processed by a script). So if you wanted
to study what effect changing from 30FPS to 15FPS has, this
is a good way to do it. The audio stream and the video stream,
use separate packets (each with size information).

C:\FFMPEG\bin\ffprobe -show_packets -show_data F:\high.mp4 > D:\Temp\high_ffprobe_out.txt

A video with a frame length of 600, is going to be mighty annoying,
so no, we don't normally do that. Or we'll get comments from
the viewing audience about it.

Video types (as concepts, I don't know how you control this):

I # The all-I video is little better than MJPEG video compression
I-B # Using only bidirectional interframe, makes seek work better, or even, play backwards
I-P-B # A mixture of these, is how Youtube would deliver it.

Some video doesn't even scroll back properly. An AVI can become confused,
if the video is over 4GB and you scroll it backwards. The standard for
extending AVI was poorly written, and the end result was AVI handling
in various pieces of software, did not mate with how others were doing it.

Paul

[Paul]

Post by Jan K.
So I still don't know which binary to get from the guyan site, where I
would agree with you that I don't want separate DLLs if I don't have to.

latest release version: 6.1.1

2023-12-31 ffmpeg-release-essentials.7z 25 MB .ver .sha256
ffmpeg-release-essentials.zip 83 MB .ver .sha256

ffmpeg-release-full.7z .ver .sha256 <===
ffmpeg-release-full-shared.7z .ver .sha256

Click the .sha256 link:

b13de924f9e752d2ba5a54c40ec0b595bb4ebab677a184308d7a819dcfa58be1

Run a sha256 over the download:

https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/packages/ffmpeg-6.1.1-full_build.7z

Name: ffmpeg-6.1.1-full_build.7z
Size: 50,475,147 bytes (48 MiB)
SHA256: B13DE924F9E752D2BA5A54C40EC0B595BB4EBAB677A184308D7A819DCFA58BE1

There are what look like three static files in the bin\ .

The git ones are nightly compiles. The "release" one should be stable.
Occasionally, when a Dev follows along with the FFMPEG project, some
of the Windows DLLs are "broken" on the Nightly (Linux is more likely
to work than Windows). Consequently I only select a Nightly, if it has
something pretty whizzy in it. For ordinary use, a Release one is plenty good.
It should only enter Release, if the DLLs are OK (whether dynamic or static).

Paul

[Harry S Robins]

|
| Try https://ffmpeg.org/
That's a great one.
Unfortunately, though, ffmpeg is very clunky. The command
lines are tedious and complicated. I don't know of any GUI
frontend to make it more usable. It's typical OSS. Works great
but no one's ever finished it off to make it usable by people
other than geeks.

https://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUPER_(Software)
But now the free version seems to be not Ads-Free and
if you do mostly the same type of video editing, it is
simpler to directly use ffmpeg from a CMD batch file.

I'm not sure if Super ever did anything that Handbrake doesn't do.

In my freeware archival software notes the last known good version
of Super freeware without advertisements was version 2010.bld.42
(Nov 7, 2010).

I got mine from http://www.videohelp.com/tools/SUPER/old-versions
but that seems to be 404 nowadays.

Looking about, I have two versions of Super in my old cdrom archives.
Name: SUPERsetup2010.build42.exe
Size: 29508222 bytes (28 MiB)
SHA256: A764863C84FE0A496AD20F3E54FC1C4D60BCB0559726267FD593A420996DFB1E

Name: SUPER_v2010.build38.exe
Size: 29426129 bytes (28 MiB)
SHA256: 3513D01415914AE8ADD728EADCCED3C8F98D6DB0FD8E83AB3DA6FE122C27AA16

Maybe that last known good version is on a wayback machine somewhere?
Anyway, in my video converter freeware archives I have the following:
avidemux
avisynth
handbrake
oxelon
super
totallyfreeconverter
virtualdub
ffmpeg
avconv
minitool

Some of the URLs if you want this software are included below.
<http://www.oxelon.com/media_converter.html>
<https://handbrake.fr/>
<https://sourceforge.net/projects/avidemux/files/latest/download>
<https://sourceforge.net/projects/avisynth2/files/latest/download>
<https://sourceforge.net/projects/oxelonmediaconv/files/oxelonmediaconv/>
<https://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualdub/files/virtualdub-win/>
<https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html>
<https://www.sabsoft.com/TotallyFreeConverter.htm>
<https://www.shotcutapp.com/download/>

[Alan Browne]

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

Handbrake.

[Paul]

Post by Alan Browne

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

Handbrake.

An acquired taste.

Handbrake was slow to acquire hardware acceleration.

Some tools are intended for "volume production", other
consumer tools are for "one-off" conversion (where the
input formats could be more obscure). The controls on
"volume production" tools may be inconvenient, or for
purists, lack sufficient detail to be trusted.

A lot of fancy tools, are just using FFMPEG underneath,
as otherwise they would need to lug around the equivalent
of KLite CODEC pack or QuickTime (as your platform dictates).

When you use FFMPEG directly, *you* control the profile and
*you* make the mistakes :-) The typical consumer flow, the
consumer has no idea what they've done to the video, or,
whether the video can be played by everyone in the audience.

For example, an Apple user could send a turd to a disparate
audience, and get feedback that it cannot be viewed. Sticking
to mainstream stuff like H264, gives a better chance
everyone (except grandpa) can view it.

This is why, at the very least, you use ffprobe (not GSpot
which stopped being updated ten years ago), to stay on
top of the "mainstream" versus "proprietary" CODEC issue.
Even the issue of "the rotation bit" is a fucking
nuisance (metadata rotation versus real rotation of
the frames). You may not know it, but some people
are viewing your video sideways, others, up and down.
Your baby could be flying inverted for all you know.

If you care about your audience at all, and don't
want to look like a schmuck, a *great deal of care*
is needed when distributing video. There are a surprising
number of holes to fall into, when distributing video.
Size is just one of them. Attaching a still image and
the video, will allow grandpa with his Win95 machine
to get something out of your email.

Paul

[Alan Browne]

Post by Paul

Post by Alan Browne

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

Handbrake.

An acquired taste.

And a very good one. It works. It's free. It's well supported. It's
cross platform. Can run it with the GUI or with a command line (at
least on Mac and Linux) which I do invoking it from my own programs.

Does it have a learning curve? Sure - it also has pre-sets that will
satisfy most needs. If the target is 3MB from 30, it won't take more
than a few tries to get there. And at those sizes it won't take but a
few seconds per try.

[Larry Wolff]

Post by Alan Browne

Post by Paul

Post by Alan Browne

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

Handbrake.

An acquired taste.

And a very good one. It works. It's free. It's well supported. It's
cross platform. Can run it with the GUI or with a command line (at
least on Mac and Linux) which I do invoking it from my own programs.

The most common shrink for home movies to be emailed would be lossless
cutting, which is available on all the major platforms, including Apple.
https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut/releases

For Windows, there's also the Easiest Media Splitter video editor tool.
https://easiestsoft.com/win/a-free-media-splitter/

While you can trim videos on the Microsoft Windows "Photos" app
https://www.lifewire.com/trim-video-in-windows-10-5113295

Microsoft promotes Clipchamp but it's a "free" subscription, I think.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/clipchamp
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-to-split-or-cut-video-and-audio-clips-fe2d10f0-1ebc-4b8b-858e-4f9442356425

But you can use the free VLC app to trim videos if that's all you need.
https://www.flexclip.com/learn/trim-video-windows-10.html

There are other methods, but most aren't free for full functionality.
https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/how-to-trim-video-on-windows/
Which lists these
https://bgrem.ai/illustration-drawing/?via=sth-best-ai-powered-video-photo-editing-tool
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nsf023x0mqs?hl=en-us&gl=us
https://www.techsmith.com/video-editor.html
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/create-films-with-a-video-editor-94e651f8-a5be-ae03-3c50-e49f013d47f6
https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9wzdncrfjbh4?hl=en-us&gl=US
https://online-video-cutter.com/
https://ezgif.com/

[Jan K.]

Post by Larry Wolff
The most common shrink for home movies to be emailed would be lossless
cutting, which is available on all the major platforms, including Apple.
https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut/releases
For Windows, there's also the Easiest Media Splitter video editor tool.
https://easiestsoft.com/win/a-free-media-splitter/

Those two looked the most promising in that they're legitimate freeware
on all the platforms, whether they be mac or linux or windows.
https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut/blob/master/README.md

1. I installed Lossless Cut on Windows using the portable zip archive.
https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut/releases
https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut/releases/tag/v3.59.1
https://github.com/mifi/lossless-cut/releases/download/v3.59.1/LosslessCut-win-x64.7z
Name: LosslessCut-win-x64.7z
Size: 103806200 bytes (98 MiB)
SHA256: 54663DE6F81BDA72AC3FCD8C01BCE3DA751AD91D9E1EAB75500335ADBB6723F0
2. I loaded the video & pressed "Keep audio" which turned to "Discard audio".
3. Pressing the "lefthand pointingfinger icon" seems to run the command
"Start current segment at current time"
While pressing the "righthand pointingfinger icon" seems to run
"End current segment at current time"
That creates a "segment number 1" in the "Segments to export" panel.
4. Pressing the blue "Export" button at the bottom right brought up options.
5. Pressing "Export" again saved the snipped video to the original folder.

It was a completely different result with the Easiest Media Splitter.

1. First I installed the Easiest Free Media Splitter (Ver 19.12.9)
https://easiestsoft.com/win/a-free-media-splitter/
Name: setup-easiest-media-splitter.exe
Size: 14818942 bytes (14 MiB)
SHA256: 245B06AF2761861656E294C83C12B73B466FD815437D1397152B7AEF74A870C4
2. Then I renamed a ~60-second video the way the help says.
copy 20240325_original.mp4 6-clips-20240325_original.mp4
Where the "6-clips-" part supposedly breaks the file into 6 even clips.
3. I dragged the "6-clips-" prefixed file onto the media splitter window.
4. The weird thing is there's no feedback at all, so I tried it a
few times before I realized it works silently to create a directory
".\output-6-clips-20240325_original"
5. That program is easy, but it's limited (apparently) to dividing the
original video into whatever number of equal parts you designate.

Overall, the LosslessCut program seems to be the better of the two
because you can better choose which section(s) you wish to keep & cut.

[kelown]

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

Shutter Encoder is a video compression tool specifically designed to do
exactly what you're asking for. Videos are best compressed by adjusting
the bitrate and resolution.

* Easy to use. Works as designed.
* Allows direct input of the 3 Mb size that you'd want to compress to,
and will automatically adjust the bitrate as needed
* Allows optional direct adjustment of bitrate
* Allows optional direct adjustment of resolution
* Will leave other characteristics of the video intact if they don't
affect the size
* Portable or setup downloads available
* Windows or MacOS

https://www.shutterencoder.com/en

[Jan K.]

Post by kelown

Post by Jan K.
What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

Shutter Encoder is a video compression tool specifically designed to do
exactly what you're asking for. Videos are best compressed by adjusting
the bitrate and resolution.
* Easy to use. Works as designed.
* Allows direct input of the 3 Mb size that you'd want to compress to,
and will automatically adjust the bitrate as needed
* Allows optional direct adjustment of bitrate
* Allows optional direct adjustment of resolution
* Will leave other characteristics of the video intact if they don't
affect the size
* Portable or setup downloads available
* Windows or MacOS
https://www.shutterencoder.com/en

Thanks for the suggestion of https://www.shutterencoder.com/en to shrink
a 30MB 13-second video to something smaller that can be more easily mailed.

I liked that it was advertised as "A converter designed by video editors".
Apparently it's free & open source donation ware, which uses these tools.
a. Bmxtranswrap <https://sourceforge.net/p/bmxlib/home/Home>
b. Dcraw <https://www.dechifro.org/dcraw>
c. Dvdauthor <https://dvdauthor.sourceforge.net>
d. Exiftool <https://exiftool.org>
e. Ffmpeg <https://ffmpeg.org>
f. Mediainfo <https://mediaarea.net/fr/MediaInfo>
g. Ncnn <https://github.com/xinntao/Real-ESRGAN-ncnn-vulkan>
h. tsMuxeR <https://github.com/justdan96/tsMuxer>
i. WeTransfer <https://developers.wetransfer.com>
j. Yt-dlp <https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp>
k. 7za <https://www.7-zip.org>

1. I went to https://www.shutterencoder.com/en to get both installers.
https://www.shutterencoder.com/Shutter%20Encoder%2018.0%20Windows%2064bits.exe
Name: Shutter Encoder 18.0 Windows 64bits.exe
Size: 105208712 bytes (100 MiB)
SHA256: D6474BF0832E404AE708B7CCFE5CC94DE33CA172F60CD8A76D6A7DFCBDE6C560

Portable Shutter Encoder 18.0 Windows 64bits.
https://www.shutterencoder.com/Shutter%20Encoder%2018.0%20Windows%2064bits.zip
Name: Shutter Encoder 18.0 Windows 64bits.zip
Size: 126161815 bytes (120 MiB)
SHA256: 352020C1860885E244B99B982B09CB9FB026CF3C04CE23E5098C94A22A527DD5

I extracted the portable zip file & made a shortcut in my menu folder.

2. I opened the 8-second raw file from the original Avidemux output.
Choose Function:
a. Without conversion
Cut without re-encoding, Replace audio, Rewrap, Conform, Merge,
Extract, Subtitling, Video inserts
b. Sound conversions
WAV, AIFF, FLAC, ALAC, MP3, AAC, AC3, Opus, Vorbis,
Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD
c. Editing codecs
DNxHD, DNxHR, Apple ProRes, QT Animation, GoPro CineForm,
Uncompressed
d. Output codecs
H.264, H.265, VP8, VP9, AV1
e. Broadcast codecs
XDCAM HD422, XDCAQM HD 35, AVC-Intra 100, XAVC, HAP
f. Old codecs
Theora, MPEG-2, MJPEG, Xvid, DV PAL, WMV, MPEG-1
g. Archiving codecs
FFV1
h. Image creation
JPEG, Image
i. Burn & rip
DVD, Blu-ray, DVD Rip
j. Analysis
Loudness & True Peak, Audio normalization, Cut detection,
Black detection, Media offline detection
k. Download
Web video

3. I wasn't sure what to do as you're supposed to know what you want.
So I decided to convert the video to H.265 using
ShutterEncoder:Choose function > Output codecs > H.265
Which gave me an output container format choice of
.mp4, .mov, .mkv, .avi, .flv, .f4v, .mpg, .ts, .m2ts

I left it at the default (H.265 -> .mp4) and it was at this
time that I noticed many "adjustments" that I left at defaults.

There were options for Rotation, Mirror, Force display,
Bitrate adjustment, Length adjustment, File size, 2Pass,
Max Quality, Image cropping, audio settings, fonts, colors,
backgrounds, subtitles, GPU decoding, GPU filtering,
Hardware acceleration, Image adjustment, Corrections,
Transitions, Advanced features like interlacing, etc.

4. I left everything at the defaults & clicked "Start function".
A percent meter slowly worked its way from 0% to 100% where it
was nice to see options for where to put the file and what extension
to use and there was even an option to "Work during inactivity".

Then it made a loud sound and said "Process completed".
03/29/2024 12:19 PM 12,613,296 20240325_raw.mp4
03/30/2024 07:24 PM 2,999,566 20240325_shutterencoder.mp4

The quality of the 3MB video was seemingly as good as the 12MB file.

Of course I only scratched the surface, but this seems to be a
good front end to ffmpeg the way I used it, as it shrank the video
to a quarter of the original size simply by using the H.265 codec.

What is nice though is that there is a "File size" option where
you can set the file size to whatever you want the result to be.

5. So I set the file size to 1MB, 2-Pass, Max Quality, which
automatically changed the bitrate from whatever it was to
Bitrate = 2147483647

And then I set the "Scale" from "Source 1920x1080" to "auto:720"
out of a list of scaling options from Source, AI real-life 4x,
AI real-life 2x, AKI animation 4x, AI animation 2x,
4096x2160, 3480x2160, 2560x1440, 1920x1080, 1440x1080, 1280x720,
1024x768, 1024x576, 854x480, 720x576, 640x360, 320x180, 3840:auto,
1920:auto, auto:2160, auto:1080, auto:720, 50%, 25%

6. When it made a loud sound and said "Process completed", I saw this.
03/29/2024 12:19 PM 12,613,296 20240325_raw.mp4
03/30/2024 07:24 PM 2,999,566 20240325_shutterencoder.mp4
03/30/2024 08:01 PM 77,304,748 20240325_H.265_1MB.mp4

Obviously I goofed but that's OK as experimenting will probably
uncover, over time, why setting it to 1MB exploded it to 77MB! :-)

Clearly this ShutterEncoder ffmpeg GUI is a keeper. Thanks!

[kelown]

[RE: Shutter Encoder]

Post by Jan K.
6. When it made a loud sound and said "Process completed", I saw this.
  03/29/2024  12:19 PM 12,613,296 20240325_raw.mp4
  03/30/2024  07:24 PM  2,999,566 20240325_shutterencoder.mp4
03/30/2024  08:01 PM 77,304,748 20240325_H.265_1MB.mp4
Obviously I goofed but that's OK as experimenting will probably uncover,
over time, why setting it to 1MB exploded it to 77MB! :-)

You didn't set the output to a compressed codec such as H.264.mp4. Your
output codec was RAW, which is uncompressed.

[John C.]

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

If the video is not something that you're concerned about privacy-wise
and if it's in the .mp4 format, then you can do this here quite easily:

https://www.xconvert.com/compress-mp4

In fact, if you go here:

https://www.xconvert.com/

you might be able to convert other formats.

[geoff]

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.

Why not on a cloud service (such as DropBox and many others) ? The
people that you give access to will see irt in all its glory.

Yes they can also download it, as with a crappy emailed version, and
share it with the world. So no difference there ....


And congrats on your baby ;- )

geoff

[David Brooks]

Post by geoff

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.

Why not on a cloud service (such as DropBox and many others) ? The
people that you give access to will see irt in all its glory.
Yes they can also download it, as with a crappy emailed version, and
share it with the world. So no difference there ....
And congrats on your baby ;- )
geoff

You are very kind, 'geoff'! :-)

Jan could also upload her video to YouTube and send a link to her
friends and family. That is easy to do nowadays.

[geoff]

Post by David Brooks

Post by geoff

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.

Why not on a cloud service (such as DropBox and many others) ? The
people that you give access to will see irt in all its glory.
Yes they can also download it, as with a crappy emailed version, and
share it with the world. So no difference there ....
And congrats on your baby ;- )
geoff

You are very kind, 'geoff'! :-)
Jan could also upload her video to YouTube and send a link to her
friends and family. That is easy to do nowadays.
http://youtu.be/tsu01TR7Ofk

Didn't realise one could do 'private' posts in YouTube, but just checked
and you can.

geoff

[David Brooks]

Post by geoff

Post by David Brooks

Post by geoff

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.

Why not on a cloud service (such as DropBox and many others) ? The
people that you give access to will see irt in all its glory.
Yes they can also download it, as with a crappy emailed version, and
share it with the world. So no difference there ....
And congrats on your baby ;- )
geoff

You are very kind, 'geoff'! :-)
Jan could also upload her video to YouTube and send a link to her
friends and family. That is easy to do nowadays.
http://youtu.be/tsu01TR7Ofk

Didn't realise one could do 'private' posts in YouTube, but just checked
and you can.
geoff

Indeed! 🙂

[candycanearter07]

Post by David Brooks

Post by geoff

Post by David Brooks

Post by geoff

Post by Jan K.
I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.

Why not on a cloud service (such as DropBox and many others) ? The
people that you give access to will see irt in all its glory.
Yes they can also download it, as with a crappy emailed version, and
share it with the world. So no difference there ....
And congrats on your baby ;- )
geoff

You are very kind, 'geoff'! :-)
Jan could also upload her video to YouTube and send a link to her
friends and family. That is easy to do nowadays.
http://youtu.be/tsu01TR7Ofk

Didn't realise one could do 'private' posts in YouTube, but just checked
and you can.
geoff

Indeed! 🙂

Im suprised they still support it, considering how hard they push the
"reach the world" stuff.