#Mac programs for reducing mp4 file size how to#
#Mac programs for reducing mp4 file size 1080p#
#Mac programs for reducing mp4 file size professional#
#Mac programs for reducing mp4 file size free#

#Mac programs for reducing mp4 file size free#

But there’s also another free app you can use on Mac - QuickTime Player. You’re done! As you can see, iMovie gives you a bit more flexibility than you can squeeze out of free tools online. Use the dropdown menus to pick video resolution, quality, and compression IMovie, for example, is the default video editor on Mac, and as such it lets you reduce video file size to the extent that you choose.ĭrag your video to iMovie and make sure it’s fully edited So while file size reductions might be attractive, you can preserve better video quality by working with Mac apps directly. The problem with most free tools online is that they don’t give you the control you need to make sure the video quality doesn’t dip. It’s very easy to use: just drag and drop your video onto the app and it will automatically make all the necessary adjustments. Let’s try to use each of those and compare the results.Ĭlideo is one of the leading free online compression tools, which promises to compress video files significantly (video uploads are limited to 500 MB). Some of them are free online, some of them are pre-installed on your Mac, and some you have to pay for. There are lots of apps out there you can use to compress videos.

#Mac programs for reducing mp4 file size how to#

How to compress a video without losing quality

For our purposes, we’ll just use the H.264 encoding and a MP4 encoder, both of which are considered good standards to compress video files.

Lastly, there’s encoding, which is the most technical and confusing part. Some professionals even use variable bitrates, where they are lower or higher depending on the scene. For example, YouTube’s recommended bitrate for HD videos is 8 Mbps, and 35 to 45 Mbps for 4K videos. We don’t recommend going below 1080p, but if you think your viewers have 4K screens, you can go up to 3840 × 2160 as well, but not higher.īitrate is another important metric that determines video file size and measures how much information is being transmitted every second (in megabytes). It would look good on most screens as well as YouTube or Vimeo, or other online players.

#Mac programs for reducing mp4 file size 1080p#

The 1080p HD video right now is considered more or less the standard. To see your own display resolution on Mac: Technically, if you match your video resolution to the viewer’s screen size, they wouldn’t see any reduction in quality. HD is often referred to as 1080p and equals 1920×1080).

Resolution represents the number of pixels in every frame (e.g. Overall, there are three main aspects that help you reduce video file size: resolution, bitrate, and encoding. You don’t think about bad video quality when you’re watching an HD blockbuster movie, right? Although that video file has been heavily compressed and reduced in size many times. But since cameras are so outstanding nowadays, the reduction in quality might not even be noticed by our eyes. Since by compressing you’re deleting some data, your video will technically get worse. So to compress videos, you have to do something very similar to optimizing photos, but at a much larger scale, stripping some information from every frame.ĭoes compression affect video quality? It might.

If you think about it, videos are just photos played in rapid sequence. You might wonder what it actually takes to reduce video file size. Here, we’ll discuss a few ways to compress video files and suggest the best one all things considered. There’s a certain art to making video files smaller in size without giving up quality.

#Mac programs for reducing mp4 file size professional#

So how come you often see professional videos or movies that you download weigh just 1 or 2 GB for two hours of footage?