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My grandpa sends me this huge 200MB video file and asks me to compress it. I bet that there are many ways I can do this. For instance, just guessing some ideas:

  1. Use an online conversion tool (http://www.mediaconverter.org/).
  2. Upload it to say Youtube and redownload it.
  3. Open up iMovie on my Mac and find the video compression feature if there is one ...

What is a simple way to compress a MOD video?

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Use HandBrake, it is available for both Windows and Mac.

There are a lot of easy to use presets. Just load the video, choose a preset (like Regular->Normal profile) then click Start.

You can control the quality (and resulting file size) by using the RF (Rate Factor) slider. Values between 18 and 28 are sane choices. Lower values mean better quality (and higher file size) and vice-versa. A change of ±6 would result in double/half the bitrate, so if your output file is 200 MB at RF 23, then choosing RF 29 should give you a video of about 100 MB.

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  • Thanks! I'm greeted by this Handbrake interface (dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1531353/Misc/Docudocker/…). Which things can I toggle to get this 200MB video down to say <10MB? I've tried just the default encoding to MP4, but the output video is still 187MB. Web optimization also produces a 187MB.
    – David Faux
    Apr 27, 2013 at 7:24
  • @DavidFaux Please be more specific about how long the file is and what its properties are (i.e., frame size and frame rate). It depends on these factors whether you can compress a 200 MB file to 10 MB. It might not be possible—at least not without sacrificing quality and making the video unwatchable.
    – slhck
    Apr 27, 2013 at 8:14
  • I added some details as to how you can change the quality, but going from 200 MB to 10 MB is almost impossible unless the original file is lossless (or visually lossless).
    – slhck
    Apr 27, 2013 at 8:18

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