Your Video Is Too Big. Here’s the Fix.
You’ve recorded a 45-minute product demo. OBS saved it as a 2.3 GB file. You need to send it to the marketing team, but Slack caps file uploads at 1 GB, Gmail won’t touch anything over 25 MB, and uploading to Google Drive is going to eat your entire afternoon on hotel Wi-Fi.
Compress it. A 2.3 GB screen recording at medium quality typically shrinks to 500-700 MB. If you’re okay with “good enough” visual quality, low quality might get it under 300 MB.
How It Works Behind the Scenes
The server runs FFmpeg, the same encoding engine that Netflix, YouTube, and basically every serious video platform uses. It re-encodes your video with a lower bitrate, which means less data per second of footage. You pick from three quality levels:
- Low: aggressive compression, smallest file. Great for quick previews or when you absolutely need a tiny file.
- Medium: the sweet spot. Visually solid, noticeably smaller. This is what you want most of the time.
- High: gentle compression. Keeps almost all the original quality but still cuts some fat.
The output comes back as an MP4 regardless of what you uploaded.
Steps
- Upload your video (MP4, WebM, MOV, AVI, MKV, FFmpeg handles almost everything).
- Pick a quality level.
- Click Compress Video.
- Download when it’s done.
Real Situations
Slack and Discord uploads. Both have file size limits. A 500 MB meeting recording won’t go through. Compress to medium, get it under the cap, share it. Takes less time than setting up a Google Drive link.
Social media. Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn will re-compress your video anyway. If you upload a 4K, high-bitrate monster, they’ll chew it up and the result will look worse than if you’d compressed it yourself first with sensible settings.
Archiving project footage. You’ve got 80 GB of raw screen recordings from a three-month project. You’re never going to re-edit them, they’re just for reference. Compressing them at low quality could free up 60+ GB.
Website videos. Embedded background videos and product demos need to load fast. A 200 MB hero video means visitors stare at a loading spinner. Compress it to 30 MB and it starts playing almost immediately.
Sending over cellular. Compressing before sharing over iMessage or WhatsApp means the recipient isn’t burning through their data plan downloading your 800 MB vacation video.
If the resolution is higher than necessary (4K when 1080p would be fine), use the Video Resolution Changer to downscale, that’ll cut the size even further. For trimming out the parts you don’t need, the Video Trimmer is the move.
FAQ
What formats work? MP4, WebM, MOV, AVI, MKV, and anything else FFmpeg recognizes. That covers basically everything.
How much will it shrink? Depends heavily on the source. A high-bitrate recording might drop 60-80%. A video that’s already compressed won’t shrink as dramatically, maybe 20-30%.
Is there an upload limit? Keep it under 500 MB for the best experience. Larger files work but take longer to upload and process.
Will the quality be noticeably worse? At medium, most people won’t spot the difference on a regular screen. At low, you’ll notice some softness and compression artifacts. At high, it’s nearly indistinguishable from the original.
Is my video stored anywhere? No. Processed and returned immediately. Nothing sticks around on the server.