video editor to shrink file size

[jsigmo]

The other thread about video editors got me wondering if there is any way to successfully shrink an existing video, on the phone, so it can be sent with a text or as an email.

First, I can't find any video editing features on my phone, either, just like in the other thread. Second, I've now downloaded several alleged video editors, even paying for one, and none of them seem to have any way to simply downsize an existing video.

I tried to send a video I shot via text messaging, and the system said it would need to compress the video before it could be sent. It then went through the motions of compressing the video, and then tried to send it, only to fail with a message saying "cancelled, file too large". Nice!

So, I can, of course, copy the video to my PC, and then do whatever editing and file conversion I want, then copy it back to the phone, and finally, share it as I wish.

But that defeats the immediacy and sponenaeity of the whole exercise. I figured one of the main things these modern phones would be good at is sharing stuff in the true spirit of "social media".

Anyhow, are there any good video editors (that run on the phone itself) that will resample/resize/compress existing videos down to reasonable sizes for "sharing"? I now have a half a dozen that will crop, put stupid graphics on them, change the aspect ratio, let me trim them for length, etc., but none that will downsample, compress, or convert the file to a smaller format.

And the built-in file shrinking obviously doesn't work. At least if the video is over some length, and it does not know that ahead of time.

 

[B. Diddy]

The filesize limits for MMS and email make the direct transmission of video files difficult. MMS filesize limits are usually around 1 MB, and email limits are around 25 MB. Shrinking a video down to 1 MB or less would yield something that's so lo-res, it'd make Minecraft look like it's 4K. You could use a 3rd party messaging platform that handles video well, like Telegram (but of course, that means the recipient would also have to be on it). Or you could upload your video to your Google Photos in the cloud and share the link privately -- assuming the other person has a good data connection, it'd be easy to view the video.

 

[jsigmo]

Yes, I realize that compressing a long high res video down to a size that will be reasonable for email, let alone MMS will obviously require its resolution to be reduced and the compression increased to a fairly heavy-handed level. But I would at least like to have an on-phone app that is capable of doing downsampling, file type conversion, and have adjustable compression settings.

You're right that to retain high quality, there's really no way other than uploading the big file to a file-sharing or video-sharing service, and the sending the link to the recipient.

I prefer to shoot videos in fairly high resolution and at reasonable frame rates so I have good quality (albeit large file-size) files for various uses. To that end, I usually leave the video set to record in 1080P at 30 fps. That's a reasonable compromise yielding good quality video while still allowing most of the camera's video features to be used.

But it would be nice to have a tool, on the phone itself, to reduce the resolution and file size as well as allow cropping and editing of these videos. I'm just not finding any video editing apps that do downsampling or file conversion the way many programs do on my PCs.

A feature that would also be handy would be to drop frames to create a time-lapse effect, retaining every tenth frame, or every 20th, for example. That could shrink a video nicely in some cases, and speed up the viewing as well. I'm probably asking too much, but really, these phones have quite a bit of processing power and lots of memory. So it seems like some of this should be practical.

I figure I'm just overlooking some good apps, so I'm fishing for recommendations.

A friend with an iPhone x sends me videos sometimes, and when it needs to compress them a lot, they do show up with low resolution. But at least they can be sent.

Like you say, I could upload the big ones to YouTube or the like and just send a link. But it would be nice to have a tool that allows me to do some shrinking of the videos on my own, too. If I find the results too fuzzy, then I'd resort to uploading them to a video sharing service and send the link. But I'd still like to be able to play with it myself on the phone.

 

[B. Diddy]

How about Video Compress?

 

[jsigmo]

How about Video Compress?

Thanks!

I tried it, and like it. I even paid to switch off the ads. It does just what I wanted, and does it simply and easily. Excellent!