I was wondering if there's any app that can take a variety of videos and compress them in a way that will cut their final size by a certain percentage. The way most programs I've found work is they take a video and spit it out at a certain resolution/bitrate, so if I were to throw in a bunch of video files of varying quality, big ones would end up smaller but small ones would end up bigger. Are there any video converters/compressors out there that can intelligently look at each video file and set the parameters to cut the sizes by roughly the same percentage?
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Bulk compress videos by percentage?
- Thread starter truth1ness
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You compress video by chosing an efficient codec. Just about the most efficient codec is h.264. It gives the best combination of small file size with high image quality. To get smaller file sizes, you sacrifice image quality and/or screen size. Flash-based video can be quite small with the added benefit of looking like crap. Many people don't care. I've seen stuff on the Internet that makes VHS look like 4k high-definition.
Decide what you are trying to achieve and take it from there.
I don't think a program like this will ever exist. The problem is that some video compresses much better than others. You can't say give me 50% smaller video file without knowing how compressed the video source is. Every time you compress video, you lose quality. It may not be very visible, but it's there. It's a matter of taste and what you can live with when it comes to video compression.
You could achieve what you're after by writing some sort of script, but it's not something you'll find natively in compression software. When recompressing a video, the first stage is decompressing the source. It's this decompressed video that is analysed and compressed, so the original file size is not relevant.
Something similar to what you're after would be to use the (constant) quality slider in Handbrake or MPEG Streamclip. The output file won't necessarily be smaller than the source, but it'll be commensurate with its attributes. And bear in mind that constant quality is less efficient than variable.
Something similar to what you're after would be to use the (constant) quality slider in Handbrake or MPEG Streamclip. The output file won't necessarily be smaller than the source, but it'll be commensurate with its attributes. And bear in mind that constant quality is less efficient than variable.