With the ever-growing emphasis on filming higher and higher quality video that looks pleasing to the eyes, one thing that is taking all the brunt is storage. Being able to retain the data that videomaking creates nowadays can often get out of hand. With cellphones also becoming capable of shooting 4K and in some recent cases, such as 8K video, it’s practically essential that video file sizes be manageable. Why? Because there is no point in making a video if you cannot share it with the masses. Writing a video to your device’s storage may be easy but transmitting it to someone on the other part of the world can end up taking a lot of time and resources. This makes you ask the obvious question; how to resize a video?
This is where compression comes in. A huge range of software has been existing for quite some time now that offers to reduce the size of the video file to make it more manageable. However, the method used to do so is by reducing the quality of the video itself. This may have been acceptable when the difference between video qualities was not very discernable. However, with the level of quality, we expect to see nowadays, dropping down the resolution or bitrates can severely affect the results. However, there are some tools that you can use to retain the quality of your videos for the most part without losing quality. If you ask how to resize a video file in adobe premiere or Filmora, you can easily find that in a resource dedicated to that, but we will keep this simple.
The Easier Way
Before we get into the different software and technical methods of reducing the size of a video, there are a couple of ways that you can use without having to go through anything complicated. However, both of these methods have their limitations which means they would not be applicable for a lot of scenarios. But if you are someone who can benefit from it, then you should get to do that too.
The first method is the trimming. There are a lot of times when we download or create videos that are not required to be seen up to 100%. What this means is that you may not need to watch every second of a video to get the desired information or entertainment. This means there are parts of that video that can be removed and that is called trimming. There are a lot of apps that can do that for you very easily or you can also get it done using an online tool. Regardless of the method, it can reduce the size of any video, quite significantly in some cases.
Another way of reducing file size is by removing the audio present in the video. This method is not suitable for really high definition videos as the size of the audio compared to that of the video would be minuscule. However, if you are trying to convert something small into an even smaller package, this could help you. Again, it is quite possible that the voice in the video is an important part of the video and contains information that you want to share as well. However, a lot of cases still exist where that may not be the case, especially in things like animations or instructional videos.
VLC
It does not matter if you want to know how to resize a video on windows 10 or other platforms, the thing that matters is the app you use. VLC is an app that is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux as well. Once you open the app, all you have to do is go to the “Media” tab on top and select the “Convert/Save” option. A window will pop up and there, you will get to add the file that you want to reduce the size of. Select the “Add…” button and browser through the explorer to select your desired media file. Then, you will click on the “Convert/Save” button and you will see a menu with the options regarding the file you are converting. Select the path and in the “Profile” menu, you will see the different conversion options.
While VLC does not give an estimated size of the converted video, it does provide some intuitiveness by showing the different devices that you may watch the video on. Depending on your desired device, you can select the option and VLC will do the rest for you. However, if you want to go into more details and customize things like resolution etc., select the “Settings” button displayed next to the Profile dropdown menu and you can do so.
QuickTime Player
For Mac users, the easiest method to deal with video size is already given in the built-in QuickTime Player. The tool that QuickTime is probably one of the easiest to use and it is a shame that not all operating systems have access to it. However, the cost of simplicity is very much visible in this app as you can see there are not too many options or configurations that one can do in it. To resize the video, all you have to do is go to the “File” menu and select the “Export” option. In there, you will see different resolution options like 4K (if available), 1080p, 720p, 480p, and some proprietary Apple devices like the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Apple TV.
You can simply select the resolution that is lower than the native resolution of the file and export it. The new file that comes out would be significantly smaller and the quality of the video will not be bad either, especially in the smaller device that you convert it for.
VideoSmaller
This is a web-based resizing tool that allows you to choose whether you want to decrease the quality of your video. The tool is quite simple and straight forward to use. All you have to do is choose the file from your computer using the “Browse” option given on the site. The website will upload your media to its servers and then you can select what kind of resolution you want. The options are given in terms of width and can be non-standard as well. this can be useful for people who are wondering how to resize a cell phone video that has a different aspect ratio.
A key part of the conversion is that it asks if you want to implement compression on the video you want to convert. Having that option unselected gives you the best possible video quality in its new resolution. This tool also allows you to remove audio from the video which can also reduce the size of the file. A possible drawback with this method is that you have to upload media to their website which could be a problem for someone with a slower internet who is working with bigger resolutions like 4K.
There are many other third-party apps and web-based services that allow you to do the same thing in different ways. Do you like the options that we shared in this guide on how to resize a video? Are there any tools that you use apart from the ones mentioned here? Let us know in the comments below!
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