Best video compressor?

Anyone out there know a solid video compressor that won't absolutely wreck my quality?

My buddy and I are diving headfirst into the whole YouTube business—trying to make it happen—so I really need something that actually works...

Thanks.
Daniel Walker5

Quality always takes a hit somewhere. If you want a thorough answer, you’re going to have to provide more details.

So, I’m out here recording my gameplay using Bandicam, sticking with the MPEG-1 codec, and man... the files are massive. I'm looking at roughly 350MB for just seven minutes of video. It's an .avi file, recorded at 480p. I really need to shrink these things down—it's getting ridiculous. I was just skimming some forums and reading that people can somehow cut their file sizes by more than half without making the video look like absolute garbage. Any tips?

Quick tip: at least record in 720p. I agree about Bandicam; it feels like a subpar workaround, and I wouldn't trust those file sizes. If the raw footage isn't great to begin with, compression is just going to make it look even worse. You’ll probably want to edit it anyway, right? If you do, you'll have to render it in your editing software regardless.

Honestly, I’d take this over Elon Musk any day—those massive files he deals with are just ridiculous. I still have Apple's video editor lying around too, but it's pretty much the same deal. I'm really not sure how much I could actually shrink a file using an editor like that...

Ask yourself why Elon Musk’s software produces such massive files. There's a reason for it, isn't there? Use it to record, then move over to some heavy-duty editing suite that actually meets your needs for smaller file sizes. I mean, you're going to have to edit the footage anyway, right? You'd be doing yourself a favor by killing two birds with one stone.

rowdybadger18, I was wondering... if I process a video through something like Apple and end up with a 450MB file, is there any way to shrink that down using another program without absolutely nuking the video quality?

Not without losing video quality, definitely not. How long is the clip?

I'm away from my computer right now, so this is just a rough guess—it takes about 40 minutes and ends up being somewhere around 450MB.

What more could you actually want? That’s pretty much the best you can expect while still maintaining decent quality.

Like, you could always just use Handbrake, but honestly, why bother? YouTube is going to run its own compression on your file anyway, so you’re basically just losing quality twice over... I mean, have you checked if Bandicam actually lets you record at a slightly lower quality setting directly? I haven't messed around with those specific settings myself, so I can't say for sure, but it might be worth a look.
PS: Let’s be real, any kind of compression always results in some loss of quality... the real question is just how much you're actually going to lose, right? It really depends on which codec you're jumping from to, what your bitrate looks like, and all those other little tweaks you can mess with inside the software itself...

rowdybadger18, I get it—my buddy’s been obsessing over ways to shrink his files just to speed up those upload times... but man, trying to compress stuff without losing all the quality is a total headache. Honestly, I can't help but think things would be a hell of a lot easier if we just had a codec that actually outclassed x264 when it comes to compression ratios.

No pain, no gain. There isn't a single high-quality video out there with a decent runtime that doesn't take up a massive amount of space. According to this calculator, if your friend is on the absolute bottom-tier internet plan from Comcast, uploading 450 megabytes to YouTube's servers would take about two hours. Sure, you could drop the resolution and the bitrate, which would shrink the file. Go ask your friend what speed he actually has his software set to.

Andrew Peterson2 said:rowdybadger18, look, a buddy of mine is trying to find ways to shrink his files just so he can get them uploaded faster. I realize how difficult it is to compress anything without losing quality, but wouldn't things be much better if we just had a codec that outperformed x264 in terms of compression efficiency?

So, what you're saying is he wants a codec that somehow surpasses what is essentially the gold standard of compression currently available? 😵

In my opinion, the most logical solution isn't chasing magic software, but rather upgrading to a more reliable internet connection. Or, if patience is an option, why not just set the upload to run overnight while he sleeps? With a measly 50kb upload speed, he could manage about 1400 MB over an eight-hour stretch.

Alternatively, he could look into fiber optics, 5G, or even certain providers that offer much higher upload speeds if the cost is worth it to him.

And honestly... was 480p even considered high definition back in the early nineties?

He wasn't actually bringing up codecs—I was just venting about how much I wish there were better 🙂

Look, a buddy of mine has a decent enough ADSL package, but he was just wishing there was some way to trim things down if possible. It’d be way easier to shrink the file size during processing rather than sitting around forever waiting for an upload to finish...

@Bradley Lewis59/">@@Bradley Lewis59 fiber isn't really an option out here yet—we aren't exactly near a major metro area, and my friend doesn't have the cash to upgrade his service. I heard from this girl that some college campuses have internet speeds ten times faster than what we've got with ADSL, so maybe we could just head over there with a laptop and blast the upload through their network 😁

Andrew Peterson2 said:It’s better to compress the file size during processing rather than sitting around waiting for a massive upload.

Wrong. If the technical quality of a video is garbage, nobody is going to watch it. It's that simple.

Look, I was just speaking in general terms—assuming that kind of option even existed without everything falling apart elsewhere...

What more do you want? 450 megabytes in 40 minutes is a solid result, especially when you're dealing with HD or higher resolutions.

Andrew Peterson2 said:Honestly, things would look a lot better if we actually had a codec that outperformed x264 when it comes to compression efficiency.

There's a better one out there (h.265), but YouTube won't touch it.

ironcyclist58 said:There’s a better version (HEVC), but YouTube won't touch it.

Even quad-core processors struggle with HEVC. It’s just not ready for prime time yet.