Live
MOV → MP4
Make a QuickTime MOV play everywhere
Compress Video
LiveRe-encode a video at one of three quality levels for a smaller file. If it would come out bigger, your original returns untouched.
What it does
- Three levels, from a hard 720p squeeze to one that leaves the picture alone
- Never hands back a file bigger than the one you uploaded
- Portrait stays portrait, and a small video is never blown up to fill the cap
Your files
Gone within the hour.
Files are uploaded over HTTPS, used only to run this tool, and deleted from our server automatically about an hour later. Never sold, never used to train anything.
Frequently asked questions
How do I compress a video?
Drop one video in above, choose Smaller file, Balanced or Higher quality, and press Compress video. The work happens on our server and the result comes back as a download, with the saving measured against the file you uploaded. There is no account, no watermark and nothing to install.
How much smaller will my video be?
It depends entirely on the video, and any site quoting you a single percentage is guessing. Footage straight off a camera or a screen recorder usually has a great deal to give. A clip that has already been through a compressor, or that came off a messaging app, may have almost nothing left and can come back unchanged. Rather than promise a number, the result screen reports the saving actually achieved on your file.
What do the three levels change?
Two things: how hard the picture is compressed, and whether it is made smaller in pixels. Smaller file compresses hardest and caps the picture at 720p. Balanced, the default, compresses less and caps at 1080p. Higher quality compresses least and leaves the resolution exactly as it is. Resolution is the bigger lever of the two by a wide margin, which is why the cheapest level is the one that also shrinks the frame. Each level also puts a ceiling on the soundtrack, though audio is a rounding error next to the picture.
Why did my video come back exactly the same size?
Because compressing it at that level would have made it bigger, so we handed your original back instead. Squeezing a video that has already been squeezed can easily produce a larger file, and returning that would be the opposite of the job. The re-encode is measured against your upload before anything is sent back, and the result screen says plainly when this is what happened rather than showing a saving of zero and leaving you to guess. It is worth trying Smaller file if you have not: it compresses harder and reduces the picture size as well, so it can still win on a video where Balanced or Higher quality could not.
Does compressing a video lose quality?
Yes. Unlike our MOV to MP4 converter, which copies the streams across untouched when it can, this tool always encodes the video again, because re-encoding is the only thing that makes a file smaller. The three levels are three points on that trade: the picture is softest at Smaller file and closest to the original at Higher quality. Keep your original if you intend to edit the footage later, since quality removed here cannot be recovered.
How large can the video be, and what happens to it?
One video per job, up to 50 MB. MP4, MOV, M4V, WebM, MKV, AVI, MPEG, OGV, FLV and transport stream files are all accepted, and a video longer than the tool can handle is refused with a message rather than left to fail. Your upload and the compressed copy are sent over HTTPS, used only for this one job, and deleted from our server automatically about an hour later.