Compress Video to a Size

About Compress Video to a Size

Most video compressors give you *high, medium, low* and let the size land wherever it lands. That is no use when a service simply refuses anything over a number.

Here you name the size: 25 MB for Gmail, 10 MB for Discord, 16 MB for WhatsApp, 8 MB for an old forum. The video is squeezed until it fits.

It is free, has no watermark, and the video is never uploaded — the whole thing runs in your browser.

The limits people usually need

| Where | Limit |

|---|---|

| Gmail / most email | 25 MB |

| Discord (no Nitro) | 10 MB |

| WhatsApp | 16 MB |

| Outlook | 20 MB |

| Many forums and forms | 8 MB |

Those are the one-tap buttons on the tool.

How the size is hit

Worth knowing, because it explains why this is quicker than you would expect.

Unlike image quality, video bitrate is almost exactly proportional to file size — a bitrate is bits per second, so:

total size = bitrate × length

That means the right bitrate can be calculated rather than guessed at:

video kbps = (target size in bits ÷ length) − sound kbps − a little for the container

That lands within a few percent on the first try. The result is then measured, and only if it is still over the line is it encoded again with the bitrate scaled by exactly how much it missed by. In practice that is one pass, occasionally two.

This matters because a video encode is slow. A tool that searched blindly would take eight passes; this takes one or two.

When a size is simply too small

The tool tells you before you wait, rather than after.

A very low bitrate makes the picture blocky no matter what. Below roughly 100 kbps of video there is nothing left to work with, and at that point the honest answer is not "compress harder" — it is use fewer pixels. Dropping 1080p to 720p removes more than half the pixels, so every remaining bit does more than twice the work. That is why the picture-size control is there.

And some targets are simply impossible: a two-hour film will not fit in 25 MB, because the sound alone would not fit. The tool says so instead of running for an hour and failing.

What you can do with it

• Get a video under an email limit so the attachment stops bouncing
• Post a clip to Discord without paying for Nitro
• Send a video on WhatsApp without it being crushed into mush by the app
• Upload to a form that caps at 8 or 10 MB
• Shrink a screen recording before sharing it with a colleague

Features

• Exact size targets in MB or KB, with one-tap buttons for 8, 10, 16, 25 and 50 MB
• The bitrate is worked out, not guessed — usually right on the first pass
• Measured and retried if the first attempt lands over the line
• Picture size control — the thing that actually helps at very small targets
• Sound options down to voice-only, or no sound at all
• Tells you when a target is impossible, before you wait
• A progress bar and the before/after sizes
• Plays back in the page before you save it
• 100% in your browser — nothing uploaded, no watermark, no queue

Good to know

• The encoder runs on one processor core, because that is the limit of video encoding inside a browser. A few minutes for a few minutes of video is normal. Keep the tab open.
• Sound costs more than you think on a long video. Ten minutes at 128 kbps is about 9 MB before a single frame of picture. Drop it to 64 kbps for a talk or a lecture.
• The output is MP4 (H.264), which plays everywhere.
• If you only need a smaller video and not an exact size, Video Compressor is simpler.

Related tools

• Video Compressor — quality presets instead of an exact size
• Trim Video — cut the clip shorter, which shrinks it far more than any setting
• Video Editor — crop, rotate, resize and adjust
• Video to Audio — keep only the sound, if that is all you need
• Compress Image to a Size — the same idea for pictures

How to use it

• Drop a video in — MP4, MOV or WEBM
• Type the size you need, or tap 25 MB
• Check the plan line — it shows the bitrate the video will get
• If it warns the bitrate is very low, set the picture size to 720p or 480p
• Press Compress to this size and wait — it runs on one core
• Press Download the video to save it