8mo ago

Shrinking A Video File

I have a DVD hard copy, but no DVD player. Anyway, I found the DVD online and downloaded it, only problem is it's a 7GB mkv. Is there a method to shrink it down by around 6GB?

9 comments

If it's in an uncompressed encode you could trancode it to HEVC or AV1, which should cut the size by 1/3. Though some older phone might not be able to play AV1.
Alternativly you could convert it to a lower resolution.
- Thanks, is there an app you would recommend to do it?
  
  I personally use ffmpeg on the command line, but I think there are some apps that add an UI for easier use.
  Plex media server can also do some pre-set conversions. Either way you probably want to do that on a computer, it take a couple of hours to convert a movie even on my i9 CPU.
  
  I would recommend FFShare, it is free and open source, but not available on google play store.
  With h.265 and 480p, you should be able to shrink the video file by quite a lot. You need to set these settings first before selecting a file.

Might be easier/faster to find the video in lower quality to download?
- Sadly, I've only ever seen larger files, not smaller

9 comments