2

I have lots of video files and am running out of storage space fast. Without affecting the quality too much, what is an easy quick way to re-encode these files to smaller files?

The original files are MP4 files from my camcorder.

Improve this question

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
1

Have a look at DeVeDe video creator. It's in the repositories and I've used it for making .iso files prior to burning them to disk. Most photographers/vidographers would shudder at the thought of permanently altering the original since anything you do to is is going to change or degrade it in some way. The MP4 is already a compressed format, so any further compression you achieve is going to be lossy.

Consider backing up your important original files on an external medium to free up space on your hard drive. I'd recommend a portable hard drive - I actually have two hard drives with my original photographs and all subsequent work. One is used as an off-site backup and gets rotated regularly with the current backup.

Improve this answer
1

I recommend backing your videos up to an external Hard Drive, but if you can't or don't want to do that, WebM is the smallest video format I've come across. I use Oggconvert to convert video files (like MP4) to ogg and WebM.

sudo apt-get install oggconvert

To convert an MP4, select 'source' and locate the file you want to convert.. enter image description here

After you have selected your file, change 'video format' to 'VP8'. Then open the 'advanced' panel and change 'File Format' to 'WebM'.
enter image description here

Then click convert.

A 256MB MP4 file I have is only 90MB in WebM.

NOTE: Like all file conversions, a certain amount of quality loss will take place, I didn't notice any, so your best bet would be to try it out and see for yourself.

Improve this answer
1
  • It does not recognize H.264 video, so only audio track got converted.
    – anatoly techtonik
    Feb 19, 2015 at 9:59
1

I've found that re-encoding with Handbrake can be quite effective. I made a preset using x264 and a constant quality factor of 25 - Quality loss seems minimal and the result seems to regularly come in at about 2/3's the size. Your mileage may vary. Here's the settings I changed from default:

enter image description here

Improve this answer
2
  • Upvote fot batch converting. Find it useful to upload many videos to small old smartphone
    – LeonidMew
    Apr 10, 2018 at 19:08
  • @LeonidMew I'm glad you found it useful!
    – Elder Geek
    Apr 10, 2018 at 20:10

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .