Compressing Videos for Mobile Devices for More Room

As you’re undoubtedly aware, the storage space on mobile devices can be very limited, and in most cases is anything between 16GB to 64GB.

That doesn’t leave you much room to maneuver, especially if you want to store GIFs or video files can often consume several gigabytes as well.

Seeing as storing large video files on mobile devices isn’t feasible, your best option is to compress them.

That can be done in two separate ways, each of which is unique.

Convert the Video to a Codec with Superior Compression

The compression of video files is determined by the video codec that they use.

Some video codecs (especially newer ones) have superior compression, and as such can compress the video file more efficiently to a smaller size while maintaining the same quality.

If you want to use this option there are a few steps that you will need to take:

1. Check the current codec that the video file encoded in with the help of one of the many free tools that are available.
2. Identify a new codec with superior compression that is compatible with your mobile device and has hardware acceleration.
3. Transcode the video to the new codec using a video converter.

Keep in mind that hardware acceleration is crucial, as software decoding on its own is processor-intensive and will require a lot of power. That in turn will consume the battery life of your mobile device quickly if you aren’t careful.

Adjust the Video Bitrate

The other option to compress your video files is to adjust the video bitrate. By lowering it, you will reduce the amount of data the video uses each second, and that will significantly reduce the file size.

Unfortunately while compatibility isn’t an issue with this option – quality is. The more you reduce the bitrate, the more the quality of your video will deteriorate and compression artifacts start to surface.

That is why although technically you could reduce the video file size to any value that you need by reducing the bitrate, in practice it isn’t realistic. After a certain point your video will become unwatchable, which is definitely not what you want.

Because of the risk involved, you should adjust the bitrate gradually and test how it affects the video quality. Ultimately your goal should be to find an acceptable compromise between the video quality and file size.

Conclusion

If you’re ready to compress your video using either method described above, you should first get a video converter. For example you could try Movavi Video Converter, as learning how to convert MP4 to WMV or any other formats is easy – and it will let you adjust the bitrate too.

All said and done between both these methods you should be able to compress your videos so that their file size is more feasible when storing them on mobile devices. Make no mistake you can significantly reduce the file size – so the real question is: How small do you need it to be?