How To Compress Video Size Using Android, iOS and WP

We often like to share photos and videos shot off with our camera phone with friends and family. But with all the high-end smart devices that we carry around, most of our digital albums contain high quality photos and videos. A few minutes of video recording in full HD (1080p) could be in gigabytes (GBs). Now, obviously if you would like to share these videos from your phone, you would have to upload ridiculously large files on the Internet. Now imagine your frustration when you can’t even send a few minutes of video footage to your friends just because “the attachment is too large to be sent“.

I’m sure many of you have gone through similar frustration. Most services tend to have a certain upper limit of permitted upload size. These services will either prevent you to upload large videos at all, or may ask you to trim the video to adjust size limitations. But what if we wanted to share the entire video with our friends?

Also, most file sharing services usually has a certain cap over the maximum permitted upload size; which implies that most of the time, large videos may either be rejected altogether or the sharing service may tell you to trim the video in order to comply with the size restrictions. And of course, don’t forget the costs involved in the use of cellular data on the go. Fortunately, there are a few ways to highly reduce the size of videos to an extent that you can easily share videos online. They’re fast, effective and considerably light on your data plan too.

Video quality

Before we describe the different ways to reduce video size in in different smartphones, it should be mentioned here that since we are talking about compression of relatively large videos, the degree of compression must be considerably high for converting them into files small enough to be shared online. To achieve such a high degree of compression, some of the data in the video must be compensated for. And so, you should know that the resultant video obtained after compression might be a bit lower-quality version of the original. With that, let us see how to compress recorded videos on your iPhone, Android or Windows Phone for sharing them.

Compress video on iPhone

iOS devices use a special compression technique that can shrink file sizes to a very high degree while maintaining a good video quality. Some apps use this feature internally as a part of the file sharing mechanism to optimize uploaded file size. An app called Video Compressor offers a high compression ratio for videos shot using the Camera app. The app lets you to choose between HD (720p), VGA and Low Quality. Depending on your requirement, you may choose the preferred quality for video compression.

1. Download and install Video Compressor from the App Store.
2. Launch the app and select the video to convert.
3. Choose the preferred quality for conversion. Note that video conversion can occur only from a higher to a lower quality (and not the other way round).
4. Let the compression process complete. Depending on the original file size and quality of conversion, you may be able to reduce up to 90% of the file size.

Almost all of us use WhatsApp Messenger for communicating and sharing information. WhatsApp is usually known to minimize data transfer rates by optimizing the content size with the help of compression. If you already have WhatsApp installed on your iOS device and you don’t want to install any separate app for video conversion, you could try WhatsApp’s own video compression feature. When you share any video using WhatsApp on iOS, it automatically invokes the file compression program before uploading it to the WhatsApp servers. WhatsApp has a maximum video upload limit of 16 MB (as of now). Apple’s iSight camera will usually produce high quality video recordings such that even a 1-2 minute video becomes a huge file. Using Apple’s video compression method, the same video can be reduced to a smaller size, just enough to fit through WhatsApp’s upload limit.

1. Make sure you have WhatsApp installed on your iPhone and you have a registered account.
2. Open WhatsApp and choose your own number from Favorites (if you haven’t saved your own contact number on your phone, go ahead and do it now). The idea is to send a message to yourself so that you can download the compressed file and later share it with others using different file and video sharing platforms.
3. In the conversation screen, tap on the upward arrow sign in the bottom left corner of the screen.
4. Tap on Choose Existing video and select the video you want to convert / shrink.
5. WhatsApp automatically compresses the file before uploading. Tap on Send to begin uploading the video.
6. When the upload is complete, the compressed version should automatically be downloaded to your Camera Roll if you WhatsApp Settings allow it, or you may manually save the video by tapping on the video from the conversation. The video starts playing in iPhone’s video player.
7. Now tap on the upward arrow icon in the lower left corner of the screen and choose Save video. The video will be downloaded to the Camera Roll folder. You can now share the downloaded video with your friends on Facebook, via Mail, or using any other such service.

Compress video on Android

Android lacks a built-in video compression tool internally. Unlike iOS, if you want to upload a particular video on WhatsApp, it’ll notify you that only 16 MB of video size is permitted. It then takes you to a video editor where you can trim the video so as to accommodate the size. However, there are quite a few apps available in Google Play Store that can convert and reduce the size of pre-recorded videos. Video Converter Android is a useful tool for this purpose. It is available as a free download but contains some pro features which can be unlocked only after upgrading to the paid version.

1. Download and install Video Converter Android from Google Play.
2. Launch the app and browse for the video you want to share (Browse tab). Tap on the check box next to the file.
3. Go to the convert tab and choose the suitable profile. Choose Reduce size option to compress video (Pro only feature). You may try other profile options but this gives the best compression results.
4. In the Profile options, set the Target size for your video. The compression will produce a copy of the original size close to the target size.
5. Tap on the Start button and wait for the operation to complete.
6. Now share the converted video using your preferred medium.

Note: The best compression results are obtained from the Reduce file size option. So if you’re really looking to compress a lot of videos, consider buying the Pro version of Video Converter Android via in-app purchase.

Compress Videos on Windows Phone

If you are a Windows Phone user, you might be aware that WhatsApp only allows you to share the initial 16 MB of video data per file. WhatsApp for Windows Phone lacks both a video trimmer as well as a video compression utility.

But, the option to compress video files for sharing is in fact more in-house than you might think, thanks to the default Mail app on Windows Phone.

In order to access the Mail app, you need to set up your account on your Windows Phone device.

1. Go to Settings >> Email + Accounts.
2. Tap on Add Account and choose from the list of available services.
3. Enter your credentials for the selected service.
4. If it is an email account, be sure to check on Email under Content to sync menu.
5. A Mail app will now be available on your app list containing the emails of your synced account.
6. Next, go to Photos and choose your pre-recorded video.
7. Tap on … from the lower right corner of the screen and choose the Share option.
8. Select the email account you want to share the video from.
9. Windows automatically compresses the file to reduce its size before uploading it as an attachment in an email.

Unfortunately though, Windows Phone doesn’t give you the option to download videos from mail attachment. So, once the mail is sent, the video attached along with it cannot be viewed or opened on your Windows Phone. Also, videos compressed with this method on Windows Phone can only be shared via Email.

But thanks to the new video editing APIs in Windows Phone 8.1, some video compression apps have made it to the Windows Phone Store. Using these apps, you can easily compress the size of a video file so that it may be shared over WhatsApp. The app we’ll be using here is called Video Compressor. The following steps will guide you to compress and share large videos on WhatsApp from Windows Phone.

1. Download and install Video Compressor from Windows Phone Store.
2. Ensure that the video you want to share is kept within any of the subfolders inside the Pictures folder.
3. Launch Video Compressor from the Start screen Tile or the App List.
4. Choose the resolution, quality and the file required to be compressed.
5. There are a few advanced settings like Optimize for WhatsApp, Compress by size, which can be only unlocked after purchasing the full version of the app. The free version only allows you choose from a predefined set of values for resolution and quality.
6. After the preferred settings are selected, tap on the Start button.

A compressed copy of the original file is created inside the Video Compressor folder under Pictures. This video can now be shared over WhatsApp or any other media sharing service.

So now you know how to reduce the size of a recorded video for sharing among friends right from your Smartphone. If you know any other ways to do the same, feel free to let us know via comments.