How to Compress Video “Lossless” (Reduce Video Size)
In general, this is quite a popular question and often beginner video amateurs fall for this “bait”: you can compress any video, only there will almost always be a loss of quality!
Another thing is that in some cases, it shows with the naked eye, in others, even the experienced gaze of a movie buff cannot see the difference!
In this article, I want to talk in more detail about how to compress a video, and how, and in what cases, to do it “without losing quality” (note, the phrase is in quotes).
what you need to know for proper compression
Complex video processing terms are deliberately removed from the article. The article is simplified as much as possible to be understood by the most common users facing the problem of converting and compressing video.
In general, almost all the videos (99.9%) that you find on the net (watch, download, etc.) are already compressed with some kind of codec. Uncompressed video – Takes up a fairly large size on disk (for example, a high-quality movie can take up several terabytes).
So the key here is that different codecs work according to different algorithms and provide different file compression rates. Naturally, this also affects how your file will be displayed later, after compression, and how much disk space the file will take up.
Therefore, in order to compress a video without losing quality, you must proceed from 2 points:
if the video was compressed with a “weak” codec (which provides far from the maximum compression), then you can compress it and reduce the size of the video file without degrading the image quality (by the way, as a rule, in this In your case, you need a more powerful PC to watch. For example, MPEG2 video can be viewed on weaker PC (no jerks or lag) than say MP4, well I’ll say a few more words about that below);
from the device you want to view the video on. For example, if you watch a video on a small screen with a low resolution, then the difference in video quality (be it 1GB or, say, 300MB), you just won’t notice it! To see the difference, you need to open the video on a large TV screen.
That is, I think my message is clear: if you watch a video on a screen with a resolution of 1024×768 (or in that “window” in Windows, and you work on the next one …), and your video quality is 1920×1080 , this video can be compressed. at a lower resolution and better codec.
By the way, here we must not forget one more parameter: the bit rate (the number of bits used to store one second of multimedia content, see Wikipedia).
The higher the video resolution, the higher the bit rate. If the bit rate is very high, it can be reduced to reasonable limits by compressing the file.
For example, the maximum bit rate for creating a Blu-ray disc is 35 mbps. So the difference between 30 and 35 is not easy to notice, but between 5 and 35 is striking …
Note: it is popular now to download videos to your phone / tablet and then watch them somewhere on the road. Therefore, such a video is not only possible, it is even recommended that it be compressed and then downloaded to your mobile device.
Here’s the thing: first, compressed video will take up less space on your flash drive (and mobile devices don’t have that much memory); And secondly, the video will not slow down (as is often the case with a video that is not ready to download on mobile devices).
*
In codecs and containers: what to try and what not to compress
There are dozens (if not hundreds) of video formats in which it is distributed. Each format has its own disadvantages and advantages, some of them are already outdated, others, on the contrary, have just appeared.
In this little subsection, I want to focus on the most popular formats that I have to deal with, and also say a few words about the convenience of compressing one format or another.
Note: By the way, you need to distinguish between codec and container. For example, the file format is AVI (this is the container) and it can be compressed using various codecs: Microsoft VC-1 or x.264 (for example).
About codecs
👉 Huge selection of codecs for Windows – featured in my selection ->
x.264 / MPEG-4 AVC is probably the most widely used codec. It is used in most video and photo cameras, where captured frames are stored on hard drives, memory cards, etc. x.264 is probably becoming the most popular codec. Adobe supports it in Flash movies, x.264 can be used with HTML 5 images.
MJPEG (Motion JPEG). An old video compression codec. Today it is outdated, we use it little.
