How to Compress a Video on Android

Sending an hour-long video to someone through your phone can take up to a few hours, depending on the file size. Not only will it cost you time, but it also eats up a chunk of your Internet plan. Luckily, you can easily compress these videos on your Android phone using a video compressor app. We show you two of these apps below.

Also read: How to Compress Videos on Your iPhone

What Is Video Compression, and How Does It Work?

On a basic level, video compression means encoding the video file to take less space than the original file. It is done by removing repetitive and redundant elements, such as pixels, sounds, scenes, etc., from the original video.

When you use video compression software, it will analyze all the pixels in a video frame and group the similar ones together in a larger block to compress them. If you’re using an outdated video compression tool, it may create blocky and distorted video clips.

This process is performed by using various algorithms called video codecs. Some modern codecs like H.264, H.265, and VP9 are designed to balance the level of compression but not lose quality. Once the compression is complete, the file format of the original video will change depending on the codec.

These algorithms mainly focus on changing the following properties of your videos:

• Resolution – if you have a 4K video file that you want to display on a 1080p screen, you can lower the resolution of the video file without losing any noticeable quality, as a 4K frame has over 8M pixels, while an FHD or 1080p frame has only 2M. In other words, you can downgrade the quality of a 4K video by four times without screen-tearing.
• Data Rate – This means the amount of data your screen displays per second. By decreasing this rate, you can minimize the file size by a significant amount.
• Aspect Ratios – While downgrading the video resolution, compression codecs ensure that the aspect ratio is maintained. Otherwise, the image will look either stretched or squashed on a standard 16:9 display.

Also read: How to Crop or Trim a Video on Android and iPhone

How to Compress Videos with Video Compressor – Converter

Video Compressor is an excellent app for reducing the video size on your Android device. It is developed by Technozer Solution and has over 1M downloads with a user rating of 4.6 stars. Plus, it only needs 23MB of storage space but offers a handful of features to resize, reformat and reduce the file size. Learn how to use it below:

1. Install the Video Compressor app from Google Play Store and launch it.

2. Once the app is launched, tap on the “Start” button to access the dashboard.

3. Allow the app to access your phone’s storage by tapping on “Allow Storage Access” and “Allow” in the next pop-up dialog.

(If the Allow Storage Access option does not show up for you, don’t worry. It’ll appear when you start compressing a video.)

4. The app gives you multiple tools, such as an image compressor, video cropping tool, video trimmer, video-to-MP3 converter, and more. To compress a video file, tap on Video “Compressor.”

5. When the media gallery shows up, select a video file from it. You can also switch to the “Browse” tab and click on the Browse Videos button to pick the video you want to compress.

6. On the next screen, you can adjust certain video settings as listed below.

• Encoder

• Video Format

• File Size

• Resolution

7. Tap on the “Compress” button at the bottom of the screen.

8. Give a name to your video file and tap on “Start.”

9. The app will now apply all the changes to your video and reduce its size. This process may take a few moments.

10. Once the process is complete, you can share the file through different apps or simply save the video in your gallery.

Also read: The Best Mobile Apps to Create a Video from Photos

How to Compress Videos with Videos & Movies Compressor

Videos & Movies Compressor is a well-known app that is developed by Sociosoftware. It has over 100K downloads and an overall user rating of 3.9 stars. Aside from that, it’s a light app and only takes 29MB of storage space. Here’s how to use it:

1. Install Videos & Movies Compressor from Google Play Store and launch the app.

2. You will be greeted by the app’s home screen asking to pick a video from your gallery. To do that, tap the arrow button on the center of your screen.

3. It will take you to your recently accessed video files. However, to visit more locations, tap the icon (3 horizontal lines) on the top-left corner of your screen.

4. After selecting a video file, you will be taken to a new screen with three different tabs:

• Preset – You can use the compression presets to decide how much you want to shrink the file size. These presets will be mentioned in percentages.

• Custom – You can use the slider to select the compression percentage in the custom setting. Additionally, you can also change the aspect ratio here.

• Output Options – Finally, you can rename your compressed file and choose a landing location for it by clicking on “Browse.”

5. Once you have customized these settings, tap on the Play button at the bottom right of the screen to proceed with the compression.

Also read: 9 of the Best Video Player Apps for Android

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How can I send a large video to someone without compressing it?

Although compressing a file makes it easier to share, it may tamper with the video quality. If you want to send someone a video without losing its quality, you can use apps with a large data storage allowance, such as Telegram, which allows you to share files up to 1.5GB in size. Alternatively, you can use cloud storage to achieve that. Just upload your video file and share the link to that webpage so that it can be accessed later. This is a handy alternative to compressing a video for email.

2. How to compress a video on Android without downloading an app?

If you don’t want to download a video compression app, you can also compress videos online through websites. Some of these websites are Clideo.com or Media.io. However, these websites are not entirely free and leave a watermark on your compressed videos, which can be removed after paying a small fee.

3. What is the best way to compress a video on Android without losing quality?

There are primarily two ways to compress a video: lossless compression and lossy compression. In lossy compression, some of the video data are removed to reduce the size, whereas in lossless compression, all your data is encoded in a different file format that takes up lesser space. For example, by converting an MOV file to an MP4 file, you can reduce the size of the video by one-tenth with nearly no loss of quality.

4. How can I compress a video for email?

While using ZIP files to compress videos for email attachments is common, it’s not the best available method. Using an online compressor or converting to a suitable file format like MP4 is a much better option.

If you’re using an app to reduce the file size of a video, you may have access to an built-in setting to compress the video for email.