I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.

I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).

What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?

I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

On 3/29/24 12:40 PM, Jan K. wrote:
> I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby
> that
> I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
>
> I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
> shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
>
> What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is
> designed
> to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are
> appropriate?
>
> I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or
> change
> the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or
> what?
Removing 'color' is a big one. Try using Curlew to rewrite the video to b/w.

"Jan K." <janicekoziol@nie.ma.spamu.prosze.com> wrote

|I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
| I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
|

Avidemux. The UI is clunky, but it's very sophisticated.
You can snip it, resize it, etc. You can also try saving in
varying formats. It's like a graphic editor.

I'm on XP right now, so my version is a bit old (2012)
but I'll describe the basics: Drop the video in the window.
Set the Selection -- where to start and end. You can do
that by dragging the video position bar and clicking A for
the start point. Then drag again and click B for the end point.

Set the output options, which you may have to experiment with.
You probably want MPEG4 264 for video and copy for audio.

Then go to Video -> Filters. You can rotate, flip, crop,
resize. Avidemux will do the operations in order, like a
batch operation. Choose and configure each operation by
double-clicking the item, such as resizing. When done, close
that window.

With options configured, simply go to File -> Save. Choose
a location and save the video. That part is a bit confusing
because it does all operations and saves at once. You
might be inclined to look for a button that says something
like, "OK, edit the video". But you just do the edit by saving it.

Avidemux is very capable and easy to use once you get
the hang of it. It's also free, open source software.

In article <uu6qu4$vma$1$koziolja@news.chmurka.net>,
janicekoziol@nie.ma.spamu.prosze.com says...
>
> I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
> I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
>
> I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
> shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
>
> What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
> to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
>
> I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
> the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

Hi

Take the freeware handbrake from https://handbrake.fr
It has an Gui. This GUI offers sliders to reduce the
quality and resolution. You can also conert to x264 and
x265.

Regards
Reinhard

On 29/03/2024 17:40, Jan K. wrote:
> I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
> I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
>
> I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
> shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
>
> What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
> to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
>
> I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
> the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

Why not use WeTransfer?

Fokke

"Jan K." <janicekoziol@nie.ma.spamu.prosze.com> wrote:

> I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby
> that I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need
> it ~3MB.
>
> I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used
> Irfanview to shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing,
> quality, compression).
>
> What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is
> designed to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods
> are appropriate?
>
> I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or
> change the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't
> need), or what?

When you send your video-laden e-mail, only 1 copy gets sent to your
SMTP server. However, a copy of the e-mail gets sent separately to each
recipient. For N recipients, your e-mail gets sent out N times. You
already expressed concern about exceeding per-message quota limits for
your recipients, but each will have to consume bandwidth to get the big
e-mail. A short polling interval in their client could result in
aborting the current mail session to start a new one which means any
e-mails not yet completed for retrieval or not yet started in the
current mail session get abort when the next mail session is forcibly
started. They end up continually retrying to download the same e-mails.
There are some users still on dial-up. Not sure you'll get a 30 MB
video file down to 3 MB. Some e-mail services, especially freebies,
have a limit of 10 MB per attachment (e.g., Hotmail/Outlook.com/Live).
I remember trialing some free e-mail providers that had only 5 MB for
total message size (as well as only a dozen messages per day since they
were a lure to show you their service, but you really needed to pay to
get a usable service tier, yet some folks use them as that is all they
need).

https://www.outlook-apps.com/maximum-email-size/

Why not upload the video to online storage to let your recipients get it
from there? Instead of wasting space on their computer to store your
big e-mail, the time for bandwidth to download it, and it should be
their choice whether to see it or not, put it online at a file server
(e.g., OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc) with a URL pointing to it
in your e-mail. That would be more polite to your recipients. They get
a tiny e-mail, and /they/ choose whether or not to get it.

https://www.techradar.com/best/best-free-cloud-storage-service
https://www.lifewire.com/free-cloud-storage-1356638

Compressing a video file into a .zip file won't help much, if at all.
You could further reduce the compression of the video file itself by
opening in a video editor (e.g., Avidemux) to save at a higher
compression level, or recode using a different codec. Whatever you do,
you need to ensure that ALL of your recipients can play your video.

How to Use Avidemux to Compress Your Videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNU5GPNW5R0

In his first test, his original 6,743 KB video was output to a 1,545 KB
file. That compress down to 23% the original size. All things being
equal, that might bring your 30 MB video down to 6.9 MB. Eh, still
might exceed the per-message quota limit at some e-mail providers. In
his 2nd test, the 6,743 KB video file got reduced to just 254 KB, but
quality really sucks. You can play with Avidemux to get the output file
size you want while gauging just how much crappier it looks.

I haven't used Avidemux for many years, and it's not on my current
own-built desktop, but it's definitely powerful, but also a bit
daunting. That's why you might want to hunt for Youtube videos having
others show you how to use Avidemux. There might also be other online
tutorials on using it.

On 29/03/2024 17:48:44, Fokke Nauta wrote:
> On 29/03/2024 17:40, Jan K. wrote:
>> I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
>> I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
>>
>> I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
>> shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
>>
>> What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
>> to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
>>
>> I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
>> the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?
>
> Why not use WeTransfer?
>
> Fokke

+1
Send the 30mb video to each recipient via WeTransfer. It is free to
use for 2GB of data, each one will get an email to download the file
within seven days after which it is deleted from WeTransfer.

--
mick

W Fri, 29 Mar 2024 13:25:45 -0400, Newyana2 napisal:

>|I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
>| I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
>|
>
> Avidemux. The UI is clunky, but it's very sophisticated.
> You can snip it, resize it, etc. You can also try saving in
> varying formats. It's like a graphic editor.
>
> I'm on XP right now, so my version is a bit old (2012)
> but I'll describe the basics: Drop the video in the window.
> Set the Selection -- where to start and end. You can do
> that by dragging the video position bar and clicking A for
> the start point. Then drag again and click B for the end point.
>
> Set the output options, which you may have to experiment with.
> You probably want MPEG4 264 for video and copy for audio.
>
> Then go to Video -> Filters. You can rotate, flip, crop,
> resize. Avidemux will do the operations in order, like a
> batch operation. Choose and configure each operation by
> double-clicking the item, such as resizing. When done, close
> that window.
>
> With options configured, simply go to File -> Save. Choose
> a location and save the video. That part is a bit confusing
> because it does all operations and saves at once. You
> might be inclined to look for a button that says something
> like, "OK, edit the video". But you just do the edit by saving it.
>
> Avidemux is very capable and easy to use once you get
> the hang of it. It's also free, open source software.

Thank you for that advice above, all of which I followed just now.

1. I downloaded & installed the Avidemux from sourceforge
<https://sourceforge.net/projects/avidemux/files/latest/download>
Name: Avidemux_2.8.1 VC++ 64bits.exe
Size: 39995334 bytes (38 MiB)
SHA256: DD962BC788D7D955B04E163E7E1A6620B573ADC379BF2EA2A2C25585782B4DCA
It installed by default into C:\Program Files\Avidemux 2.8 VC++ 64bits\
[x]Avidemux VC++ 64 bits (87.29MB)
[_]Dev files (development files if you want to write plugins)
2. I moved the 3 startmenu shortcuts to my taskbar pinned-folder menu
C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Avidemux 2.8 VC++ 64bits
avidemux.lnk (avidemux.exe)
avidemux_jobs.lnk (avidemux_jobs.exe)
Uninstall Avidemux VC++ 64bits.lnk (Uninstall Avidemux VC++ 64bits.exe)
3. I ran GSpot on the video which reported the following basic information
<http://gspot.headbands.com/>
Size 27.4 MB (28,059 KB / 28,733,331 bytes)
Length 0:13.263, Frms 396, kbps 17075, Qf 0.274
Pics/s 30.000, Frames/s 30.000
Codec avc1, Name H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
Audio mp4a: MPEG-4 AAC LC, 48000Hz 256 kb/s tot , stereo (2/0)
Container mp42: MP4 v2 [ISO 14496-14]
isom: MP4 Base Media v1 [IS0 14496-12:2003]
Recommended Display Size: 1920 x 1080
4. I started Avidemux & dropped the video into the Avidemux window
5. I set the "A start" at the beginning & the "B end" at 8 seconds
6. The Avidemux "Output Format" defaulted to "MKV Muxer" with choices of
AVI Muxer, Dummy Muxer, FLV Muxer, MKV Muxer, MOV Muxer, MP4 Muxer,
Mpeg TS Muxer(ff), Mpeg-PS Muxer(ff), Video Only, WebM Muxer
7. I have no idea which to pick but I didn't need audio so I set it to
Video Only
8. In the "Video Output" were a lot of choices
Copy,(FF)HuffYUV,DV(ffmpeg),FFV1,FLV1(flash),HEVC(x265),Mjpeg Encoder,
Mpeg2(ff),Mpeg4ASP(xfid4),Mpeg4AVC(x264),NvidiaH264,NvidiaHEVC,
UtVideo(ffmpeg),VP9(libvpx),Yv12 Encoder,null
9. In the "Audio Output (1 track)" were also lots of choices
Copy,AAC (FDK),AAC (lav),AC3 (Aften),AC3 (lav),MP2 (Twolame),
MP2 (lav),MP3 (lame),Opus Encoder,PCM,Vorbis
10 The closest to your suggestion I could find are the following
Video Output = Mpeg4 AVC (x264)
Audio Output = Copy
11 I clicked the menu item for "Avidemux 2.8.1: Video > Filters"
which brought up the "Video Filter Manager" which has too many
options to list here, but none seemed aimed at reducing size.
12 With no filters set I clicked "Avidemux 2.8.1: File > Save"
which saved to "filename.raw" (which I had not expected).

I never heard of a "raw" format (which tried to open in Irfanview).
I ran GSpot on the raw file <http://gspot.headbands.com/>
Size 12.0 MB (12,317 KB / 12,613,296 bytes)
Length 0:13.263, Frms 396, kbps 17075, Qf 0.274
Pics/s blank, Frames/s blank
Codec H264, Name H.264/AVC
Audio blank
Container MPEG Elementary Video << { 1 vid }

I renamed "raw" to "mp4" so that it opened in "MPC-BE 1.6.11 (build 0)"
<https://github.com/Aleksoid1978/MPC-BE/releases/tag/1.6.11>

Can I get it down to about 3MB instead of 12MB?
What other options give me the most bang for the buck to shrink it?

Herbert Kleebauer wrote:

> > I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
> > I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
>
> Try https://ffmpeg.org/
>
> It is a command line tool which needn't be installed. You have
> to find the correct command line parameters, but a Google
> search with "ffmpeg reduce video size" will give you the
> needed information.

Thanks for that advice to try ffmpeg to shrink a video for email.
After a few dead ends (eg https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffmpeg/files/)
I found a compiled Windows binary and ran the following test steps.

1. I went to the ffmpeg.org suggested location for Windows binaries
https://ffmpeg.org/download.html#build-windows
Which gave me two different choices
https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/
https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases

It was hard to choose, for example, what's the difference between
ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip at 57.3 MB
ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl.zip at 134 MB

So I arbitrarily picked the smaller of the two files above.
https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases/download/latest/ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip
Name: ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip
Size: 60052525 bytes (57 MiB)
SHA256: 447EA59D610B9DC9F240EC933D761F717B41D28E7EC62C4A42F86CADCF21D93C
Which extracted to a tree of which these were in the "bin" directory.
ffprobe.exe, ffmpeg.exe, ffplay.exe
swresample-5.dll, avutil-59.dll, avdevice-61.dll, avcodec-61.dll
avfilter-10.dll, postproc-58.dll, avformat-61.dll, swscale-8.dll

2. I copied the 12MB 8-second-long RAW result from Avidemux & googled.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ffmpeg+reduce+video+size
Which found this fancy new compression as the first search result.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/28803/how-can-i-reduce-a-videos-size-with-ffmpeg
Which suggested this brand new (as of 2020) compression command.
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output.mp4
Which I ran as follows
ffmpeg -i 20240325.raw.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output.mp4
With the result being quite a bit smaller in total file size.
03/29/2024 02:19 PM 12,613,296 20240325.raw.mp4
03/29/2024 02:33 PM 997,884 output.mp4

3. There were also suggestions to reduce the frame size in half.
ffmpeg -i 20240325.raw.mp4 -vf "scale=trunc(iw/4)*2:trunc(ih/4)*2" -c:v libx265 -crf 28 halfsize.mp4
Which had an even more drastic effect on the total file size.
03/29/2024 08:37 PM 334,564 halfsize.mp4

GSpot shows it changed the recommended display size.
12,613,296 20240325.mp4 Recommended Display Size 1920x1080
997,884 output.mp4 Recommended Display Size 1920x1080
334,564 halfsize.mp4 Recommended Display Size 960x540

In that stackexchange were many more options some of which I had
tested, but the results already are small enough to email now.

Thanks for helping me out in reducing video to emailable sizes.

"Jan K." <janicekoziol@nie.ma.spamu.prosze.com> wrote|

| 10 The closest to your suggestion I could find are the following
| Video Output = Mpeg4 AVC (x264)
| Audio Output = Copy

I think that's what I've typically used. For output I used
MP4 Muxer on a sample just now. It's an mp4 video that's 23.5 MB.
1280x720. 3:07.

I didn't crop or cut any of the length, but I did resize it to
640x360. I'm guessing I could get it more compact
experimenting with formats, but I don't really know anything
about audio or video encoding, so I just try things. The result is
15 MB.

The first time I used Avidemux it was for a friend who had
a video of blue-footed boobies taken with an iPhone. The
video was sideways with extreme width vs height, and very
large size. So I rotated it upright, reduced the wxh, and
cropped out what wasn't necessary, going from a gigantic
video to 240x276px that could be sent in email. The video was
reduced from 220 MB to 4.4 MB.

So it really depends on what you need. Can you afford to crop
it? Can you afford to resize it smaller? Can you afford to reduce
the length?

If I understand you, you didn't reduce the play time -- the
overall video length. You can do that by setting A and B. The
A and B numbers under Selection should then show something
less than the whole video length.

Resize: Video Output, Filters, double-click swResize and select
new size. (Why sw? Beats me.) To crop do the same thing with
the crop option. For example, can you afford to snip 1oo pixels
off the right and left? That will reduce file size.

Basically, whatever reduces the overall number of pixels in a
frame x number of frames is going to reduce file size.

I just saved my test file as "bbbb" and it showed up as bbbb.mp4.
Maybe the trouble with yours was the output format?

On 3/29/24 03:49 PM, Jan K. wrote:
> Herbert Kleebauer wrote:
>
>>  > I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
>>  > I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
>>
>> Try https://ffmpeg.org/
>>
>> It is a command line tool which needn't be installed. You have
>> to find the correct command line parameters, but a Google
>> search with "ffmpeg reduce video size" will give you the
>> needed information.
>
> Thanks for that advice to try ffmpeg to shrink a video for email.
> After a few dead ends (eg https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffmpeg/files/)
> I found a compiled Windows binary and ran the following test steps.
>
> 1. I went to the ffmpeg.org suggested location for Windows binaries
>   https://ffmpeg.org/download.html#build-windows
>   Which gave me two different choices
>   https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/
>   https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases
>
>   It was hard to choose, for example, what's the difference between
>   ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip at 57.3 MB
>   ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl.zip at 134 MB
>
>   So I arbitrarily picked the smaller of the two files above.
>
> https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases/download/latest/ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip
>   Name: ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip
>   Size: 60052525 bytes (57 MiB)
>   SHA256: 447EA59D610B9DC9F240EC933D761F717B41D28E7EC62C4A42F86CADCF21D93C
>   Which extracted to a tree of which these were in the "bin" directory.
>   ffprobe.exe, ffmpeg.exe, ffplay.exe
>   swresample-5.dll, avutil-59.dll, avdevice-61.dll, avcodec-61.dll
>   avfilter-10.dll, postproc-58.dll, avformat-61.dll, swscale-8.dll
>
> 2. I copied the 12MB 8-second-long RAW result from Avidemux & googled.
>   https://www.google.com/search?q=ffmpeg+reduce+video+size
>   Which found this fancy new compression as the first search result.
>   https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/28803/how-can-i-reduce-a-videos-size-with-ffmpeg
>   Which suggested this brand new (as of 2020) compression command.
>   ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output.mp4
>   Which I ran as follows
>   ffmpeg -i 20240325.raw.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output.mp4
>   With the result being quite a bit smaller in total file size.
>   03/29/2024  02:19 PM        12,613,296 20240325.raw.mp4
>   03/29/2024  02:33 PM           997,884 output.mp4
>
> 3. There were also suggestions to reduce the frame size in half.
>   ffmpeg -i 20240325.raw.mp4 -vf "scale=trunc(iw/4)*2:trunc(ih/4)*2" -c:v libx265 -crf 28 halfsize.mp4
>   Which had an even more drastic effect on the total file size.
>   03/29/2024  08:37 PM           334,564 halfsize.mp4
>
>   GSpot shows it changed the recommended display size.
>   12,613,296 20240325.mp4 Recommended Display Size 1920x1080
>      997,884 output.mp4   Recommended Display Size 1920x1080
>      334,564 halfsize.mp4 Recommended Display Size 960x540
>
> In that stackexchange were many more options some of which I had
> tested, but the results already are small enough to email now.
>
> Thanks for helping me out in reducing video to emailable sizes.
The real test, and I'd be interested in knowing, is what looks good?
How far could you go and still have a usable video. You have a 1G 1920x102 and a 1/3G @ 1/2 the
size. Did the smaller one look that bad?
--
Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon 6.0.4 Kernel 6.5.0-26-generic
Al

Reinhard Skarbal wrote:

> In article <uu6qu4$vma$1$koziolja@news.chmurka.net>,
> janicekoziol@nie.ma.spamu.prosze.com says...
>>
>> I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
>> I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
>>
>> I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
>> shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
>>
>> What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
>> to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
>>
>> I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
>> the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?
>
> Hi
>
> Take the freeware handbrake from https://handbrake.fr
> It has an Gui. This GUI offers sliders to reduce the
> quality and resolution. You can also conert to x264 and
> x265.

Thank you for that suggestion of using Handbrake, where in the past I used
to use something called Super for video-format conversions, but not sizes.

1. As suggested, I picked up HandBrake 1.7.3 from https://handbrake.fr/
https://github.com/HandBrake/HandBrake/releases/download/1.7.3/HandBrake-1.7.3-x86_64-Win_GUI.exe
Name: HandBrake-1.7.3-x86_64-Win_GUI.exe
Size: 23646760 bytes (22 MiB)
SHA256: F80829D30029BA255675929587F2B6665DE2790E52B24845B92D1427C8893264

2. Installing HandBrake put a desktop icon "HandBrake.lnk" with a target of
C:\Program Files\HandBrake\HandBrake.exe which I moved to my taskbar folder.
But when I ran HandBrake it complained I needed a newer .NET Framework.
"The Windows User interface requires Microsoft .NET Desktop Runtime 6.0"
https://dotnet.microsoft.com/en-us/download/dotnet/thank-you/runtime-desktop-6.0.25-windows-x64-installer
https://download.visualstudio.microsoft.com/download/pr/52d6ef78-d4ec-4713-9e01-eb8e77276381/e58f307cda1df61e930209b13ecb47a4/windowsdesktop-runtime-6.0.25-win-x64.exe
Name: windowsdesktop-runtime-6.0.25-win-x64.exe
Size: 57436096 bytes (54 MiB)
SHA256: C7B9C0DEA9D686486921AEA9DFB4F86C63D4B11D739FC26BEDB55BE0D96CF0FB
But when I installed that, I ran out of disk space.

3. I checked to see which .NET Framework I already had installed.
https://www.blacklightsoftware.com/blog/posts/2023/april/how-to-check-which-net-framework-version-is-installed/
Which suggests this registry query from the Windows admin prompt
Win+R cmd [control+shift+enter]
reg query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Net Framework Setup\NDP" /s
Which seems to show I have version 2 and version 4 installed.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Net Framework Setup\NDP\CDF\v4.0
SMSvcHostPath REG_SZ C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Net Framework Setup\NDP\v2.0.50727\1038

4. So I installed an older HandBrake to work with that older .NET Framework
Name: HandBrake-1.0.7-x86_64-Win_GUI.exe
Size: 10468271 bytes (10222 KiB)
SHA256: 3D63E96BA3E0E538D6D7FCE86070FA5621B2BCD89123D53D25BBE625B7E7C4BA

5. As noted, HandBrake has a lot of options, but I only changed these.
Video Quality was 22. I changed it to half that, at 44.
Video Codec was H264 (x264). I changed it to H265 (x265).
Then I pressed the HandBrake "Start Encode" green button.

6. That shrunk the Avidemux raw file to less than a tenth in file size.
03/29/2024 07:19 PM 12,613,296 20240325.raw.mp4
03/29/2024 09:23 PM 95,895 20240325.raw-1.m4v
Where it changed it to an "m4v" which opened up in Windows using VLC.
But the quality was bad compared to the ffmpeg results run prior.

7. I decided to try again, but this time changing the original 1920x1080
to something smaller, where Handbrake needs both the X & Y pixels
(which I had to look up as I don't know what the pixel ratios are).
https://typito.com/blog/video-resolutions/
SD (Standard Definition) 480p 4:3 640 x 480
HD (High Definition) 720p 16:9 1280 x 720
Full HD (FHD) 1080p 16:9 1920 x 1080
QHD (Quad HD) 1440p 16:9 2560 x 1440
2K video 1080p 1:1.77 2048 x 1080
4K video or Ultra HD (UHD) 4K or 2160p 1:1.9 3840 x 2160
8K video or Full Ultra HD 8K or 4320p 16:9 7680 x 4320

8. I changed the original 1080p frame size to 720p (16:9,1280x720),
and then I also changed the original to 480p (4:3,640x480).

HandBrake 1.0.7 (2017040900)-64bit:Picture tab
Original Width=1920, Original Height=1080
720p Width=1280, 720p Height=720 > Start Encode > 720p.mp4
480p Width=640, 480p Height=480 > Start Encode > 480p.mp4

9. The resulting file sizes were
03/29/2024 07:19 PM 12,613,296 20240325.raw.mp4
03/29/2024 09:43 PM 644,948 480p.mp4
03/29/2024 09:42 PM 1,812,453 720p.mp4
Which can be compared in file size to previous outputs.
03/29/2024 08:47 PM 997,884 cv_output.mp4
03/29/2024 08:37 PM 334,564 halfsize.mp4
03/29/2024 08:33 PM 997,884 output.mp4

Overall, the quality of both the 480p and 720p were just fine for
my purposes of sending in email, where the 720p is about 15% of
the 1080p file size & the 480p is about 5% of the 1080p file size.

Thank you for the suggestion of using HandBrake, where in my
few tests above, reducing the pixel ratio seems to work well.

W Fri, 29 Mar 2024 16:17:23 -0400, Newyana2 napisal:

> "Jan K." <janicekoziol@nie.ma.spamu.prosze.com> wrote|
>
>| 10 The closest to your suggestion I could find are the following
>| Video Output = Mpeg4 AVC (x264)
>| Audio Output = Copy
>
> I think that's what I've typically used. For output I used
> MP4 Muxer on a sample just now. It's an mp4 video that's 23.5 MB.
> 1280x720. 3:07.
>
> I didn't crop or cut any of the length, but I did resize it to
> 640x360. I'm guessing I could get it more compact
> experimenting with formats, but I don't really know anything
> about audio or video encoding, so I just try things. The result is
> 15 MB.
>
> The first time I used Avidemux it was for a friend who had
> a video of blue-footed boobies taken with an iPhone. The
> video was sideways with extreme width vs height, and very
> large size. So I rotated it upright, reduced the wxh, and
> cropped out what wasn't necessary, going from a gigantic
> video to 240x276px that could be sent in email. The video was
> reduced from 220 MB to 4.4 MB.
>
> So it really depends on what you need. Can you afford to crop
> it? Can you afford to resize it smaller? Can you afford to reduce
> the length?
>
> If I understand you, you didn't reduce the play time -- the
> overall video length. You can do that by setting A and B. The
> A and B numbers under Selection should then show something
> less than the whole video length.
>
> Resize: Video Output, Filters, double-click swResize and select
> new size. (Why sw? Beats me.) To crop do the same thing with
> the crop option. For example, can you afford to snip 1oo pixels
> off the right and left? That will reduce file size.
>
> Basically, whatever reduces the overall number of pixels in a
> frame x number of frames is going to reduce file size.

I think I've got a lot of solutions, where the baby moves around so I can't
crop out anything but the baby didn't talk so I removed the audio and the
baby almost fell off the bed so I removed that part in the second half.

As you said, what you can do depends on what your start & end points are.

Almost all the tests I ran worked well except halving the video quality.
I did shrink the original 30MB 13-second video to 12MB by using the A:B
buttons in Avidemux and then I used HandBrake to change the format from
1080p to 720p and to 480p which shrank the size appreciably.

The ffmpeg options also shrank the video file size drastically, so in the
end they all work to shrink the video down without losing usable quality.

The names are random but I won't change them for this report because I
already reported the names in the prior tests, so this is what I got.
03/29/2024 09:23 PM 95,895 20240325.raw-1.m4v
03/29/2024 08:37 PM 334,564 halfsize.mp4
03/29/2024 09:43 PM 644,948 480p.mp4
03/29/2024 08:47 PM 997,884 cv_output.mp4
03/29/2024 08:33 PM 997,884 output.mp4
03/29/2024 09:42 PM 1,812,453 720p.mp4
03/29/2024 07:19 PM 12,613,296 20240325.raw.mp4
03/25/2024 07:58 PM 28,733,331 20240325_original.mp4

a. The original is 29MB at 13 seconds long (20240325_original.mp4).
b. The Avidemux AB-trim is 13MB at 9 seconds (20240325.raw.mp4).
c. That raw converted with ffmpeg to H265 was 1MB (output.mp4)
ffmpeg -i 20240325.raw.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output.mp4
d. That raw converted with ffmpeg halved was 335KB (halfsize.mp4)
ffmpeg -i 20240325.raw.mp4 -vf "scale=trunc(iw/4)*2:trunc(ih/4)*2" -c:v libx265 -crf 28 halfsize.mp4
e. The raw converted with Handbrake from 1080p to 720p is 2MB (720p.mp4).
f. The raw converted with Handbrake from 1080p to 480p is 644KB (480p.mp4).

All of the results I deemed usable except when I lowered the quality using
HandBrake from "Video Quality = 22" to "Video Quality = 44), which resulted
in the smallest file size (at 96KB) but that quality wasn't usable.

I think the approach I may take moving forward might be
1. Use Avidemux to trim the beginning and the end off (if possible).
2. Use ffmpeg to compress to the latest H265 codec (if possible).
3. If more is needed, then change the 1080p to 720p or 480p with HandBrake.

Does that sound like a decent plan for a typical home video shrink?

On Fri, 29 Mar 2024 21:52:57 +0100, Herbert Kleebauer wrote:

> On 29.03.2024 21:21, Newyana2 wrote:
>> "Herbert Kleebauer" <klee@unibwm.de> wrote
>>
>>|
>>| Try https://ffmpeg.org/
>
>> That's a great one.
>
>> Unfortunately, though, ffmpeg is very clunky. The command
>> lines are tedious and complicated. I don't know of any GUI
>> frontend to make it more usable. It's typical OSS. Works great
>> but no one's ever finished it off to make it usable by people
>> other than geeks.
>
> Many years ago I used a graphical front end for ffmpeg:
>
> https://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html
> https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUPER_(Software)
>
> But now the free version seems to be not Ads-Free and
> if you do mostly the same type of video editing, it is
> simpler to directly use ffmpeg from a CMD batch file.

I'm not sure if Super ever did anything that Handbrake doesn't do.

In my freeware archival software notes the last known good version
of Super freeware without advertisements was version 2010.bld.42
(Nov 7, 2010).

I got mine from http://www.videohelp.com/tools/SUPER/old-versions
but that seems to be 404 nowadays.

Looking about, I have two versions of Super in my old cdrom archives.
Name: SUPERsetup2010.build42.exe
Size: 29508222 bytes (28 MiB)
SHA256: A764863C84FE0A496AD20F3E54FC1C4D60BCB0559726267FD593A420996DFB1E

Name: SUPER_v2010.build38.exe
Size: 29426129 bytes (28 MiB)
SHA256: 3513D01415914AE8ADD728EADCCED3C8F98D6DB0FD8E83AB3DA6FE122C27AA16

Maybe that last known good version is on a wayback machine somewhere?
Anyway, in my video converter freeware archives I have the following:
avidemux
avisynth
handbrake
oxelon
super
totallyfreeconverter
virtualdub
ffmpeg
avconv
minitool

Some of the URLs if you want this software are included below.
<http://www.oxelon.com/media_converter.html>
<https://handbrake.fr/>
<https://sourceforge.net/projects/avidemux/files/latest/download>
<https://sourceforge.net/projects/avisynth2/files/latest/download>
<https://sourceforge.net/projects/oxelonmediaconv/files/oxelonmediaconv/>
<https://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualdub/files/virtualdub-win/>
<https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html>
<https://www.sabsoft.com/TotallyFreeConverter.htm>
<https://www.shotcutapp.com/download/>

mick <nospam@junk.mail> wrote at 18:16 this Friday (GMT):
> On 29/03/2024 17:48:44, Fokke Nauta wrote:
>> On 29/03/2024 17:40, Jan K. wrote:
>>> I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
>>> I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
>>>
>>> I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
>>> shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
>>>
>>> What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
>>> to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
>>>
>>> I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
>>> the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?
>>
>> Why not use WeTransfer?
>>
>> Fokke
>
> +1
> Send the 30mb video to each recipient via WeTransfer. It is free to
> use for 2GB of data, each one will get an email to download the file
> within seven days after which it is deleted from WeTransfer.

Another good one is 0x0.st.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

On 2024-03-29 12:40, Jan K. wrote:
> I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
> I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
>
> I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
> shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
>
> What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
> to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
>
> I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
> the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

Handbrake.

--
“Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first;
nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.”
- Charles de Gaulle.

"Jan K." <janicekoziol@nie.ma.spamu.prosze.com> wrote

| I think the approach I may take moving forward might be
| 1. Use Avidemux to trim the beginning and the end off (if possible).
| 2. Use ffmpeg to compress to the latest H265 codec (if possible).
| 3. If more is needed, then change the 1080p to 720p or 480p with
HandBrake.
| | Does that sound like a decent plan for a typical home video shrink?

Avidemux can do #3. I don't know whether ffmpeg
can perform better compression. At this point you
know more than I do. :)

On 2024-03-29 19:30, Jan K. wrote:
> What other options give me the most bang for the buck to shrink it?

Reduce frames per second, perhaps.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 3/29/2024 3:49 PM, Jan K. wrote:
> Herbert Kleebauer wrote:
>
>>  > I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
>>  > I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
>>
>> Try https://ffmpeg.org/
>>
>> It is a command line tool which needn't be installed. You have
>> to find the correct command line parameters, but a Google
>> search with "ffmpeg reduce video size" will give you the
>> needed information.
>
> Thanks for that advice to try ffmpeg to shrink a video for email.
> After a few dead ends (eg https://sourceforge.net/projects/ffmpeg/files/)
> I found a compiled Windows binary and ran the following test steps.
>
> 1. I went to the ffmpeg.org suggested location for Windows binaries
>   https://ffmpeg.org/download.html#build-windows
>   Which gave me two different choices
>   https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/
>   https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases
>
>   It was hard to choose, for example, what's the difference between
>   ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip at 57.3 MB
>   ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl.zip at 134 MB
>  
>   So I arbitrarily picked the smaller of the two files above.
>   https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases/download/latest/ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip
>   Name: ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip
>   Size: 60052525 bytes (57 MiB)
>   SHA256: 447EA59D610B9DC9F240EC933D761F717B41D28E7EC62C4A42F86CADCF21D93C
>   Which extracted to a tree of which these were in the "bin" directory.
>   ffprobe.exe, ffmpeg.exe, ffplay.exe
>   swresample-5.dll, avutil-59.dll, avdevice-61.dll, avcodec-61.dll
>   avfilter-10.dll, postproc-58.dll, avformat-61.dll, swscale-8.dll
>
> 2. I copied the 12MB 8-second-long RAW result from Avidemux & googled.
>   https://www.google.com/search?q=ffmpeg+reduce+video+size
>   Which found this fancy new compression as the first search result.
>   https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/28803/how-can-i-reduce-a-videos-size-with-ffmpeg
>   Which suggested this brand new (as of 2020) compression command.
>   ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output.mp4
>   Which I ran as follows
>   ffmpeg -i 20240325.raw.mp4 -vcodec libx265 -crf 28 output.mp4
>   With the result being quite a bit smaller in total file size.
>   03/29/2024  02:19 PM        12,613,296 20240325.raw.mp4
>   03/29/2024  02:33 PM           997,884 output.mp4
>
> 3. There were also suggestions to reduce the frame size in half.
>   ffmpeg -i 20240325.raw.mp4 -vf "scale=trunc(iw/4)*2:trunc(ih/4)*2" -c:v libx265 -crf 28 halfsize.mp4
>   Which had an even more drastic effect on the total file size.
>   03/29/2024  08:37 PM           334,564 halfsize.mp4
>
>   GSpot shows it changed the recommended display size.
>   12,613,296 20240325.mp4 Recommended Display Size 1920x1080
>      997,884 output.mp4   Recommended Display Size 1920x1080
>      334,564 halfsize.mp4 Recommended Display Size 960x540
>
> In that stackexchange were many more options some of which I had
> tested, but the results already are small enough to email now.
>
> Thanks for helping me out in reducing video to emailable sizes.

For the Gyan one, you obviously want the statically compiled one.

The larger static package, there are no DLLs to lug around.
You can drop ffmpeg.exe or ffprobe.exe into your work folder
and go to work.

The package which uses EXE+DLLs means some sort of "install strategy"
on Windows, is better for it.

I always use the static ones.

*******

When you ask a question about a video, you start with

ffprobe filename.ext

Copy out the video stream and audio stream lines with their
CODEC declaration.

Then people in the audience, can tell you whether the
video is already compressed or not. When a video is already
compressed, making improvements on compression is harder,
and additional decompress-recompress steps, degrades the content,
as the compressors tend to be lossy. The video can look
"a little bit soft", like a bad soap opera, with too much
"rough handling".

There are lossless CODECs (HUFFYUV), but that one only
reduces a video to 66% of original size. That's used for
archival storage, and is not a distribution strategy.
Whereas H264 or H265 lossy CODECs, they could give
100:1 compression. Your improvements imply the source
video was already compressed (and while hardware support
for compression was poor 20 years ago, it's pretty good now).

Compression in hardware, takes about 1.5 billion instructions
per second, to do in real time (ballpark number). And that
amount of effort, means things like USB video capture sticks
may not be ice cold to the touch :-) One core on your smartphone
would be pretty busy. But the alternative (uncompressed), would burn
through flash like the clappers, and then you'd need
terabytes of NAND to store it all. Just about everything
today, has already been compressed. Digital TV transmissions
are compressed (and ready to write to disk).

Video is unlikely to be "completely RAW", because the standards
for that are "poor to nonexistent" and working that way is a
recipe for hair loss. If a piece of equipment is claiming that,
use the ffprobe and see what it is really doing.

Paul

On 3/29/2024 7:07 PM, Alan Browne wrote:
> On 2024-03-29 12:40, Jan K. wrote:
>> I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
>> I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
>>
>> I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
>> shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
>>
>> What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
>> to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
>>
>> I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
>> the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?
>
> Handbrake.

An acquired taste.

Handbrake was slow to acquire hardware acceleration.

Some tools are intended for "volume production", other
consumer tools are for "one-off" conversion (where the
input formats could be more obscure). The controls on
"volume production" tools may be inconvenient, or for
purists, lack sufficient detail to be trusted.

A lot of fancy tools, are just using FFMPEG underneath,
as otherwise they would need to lug around the equivalent
of KLite CODEC pack or QuickTime (as your platform dictates).

When you use FFMPEG directly, *you* control the profile and
*you* make the mistakes :-) The typical consumer flow, the
consumer has no idea what they've done to the video, or,
whether the video can be played by everyone in the audience.

For example, an Apple user could send a turd to a disparate
audience, and get feedback that it cannot be viewed. Sticking
to mainstream stuff like H264, gives a better chance
everyone (except grandpa) can view it.

This is why, at the very least, you use ffprobe (not GSpot
which stopped being updated ten years ago), to stay on
top of the "mainstream" versus "proprietary" CODEC issue.
Even the issue of "the rotation bit" is a fucking
nuisance (metadata rotation versus real rotation of
the frames). You may not know it, but some people
are viewing your video sideways, others, up and down.
Your baby could be flying inverted for all you know.

If you care about your audience at all, and don't
want to look like a schmuck, a *great deal of care*
is needed when distributing video. There are a surprising
number of holes to fall into, when distributing video.
Size is just one of them. Attaching a still image and
the video, will allow grandpa with his Win95 machine
to get something out of your email.

Paul

W Sat, 30 Mar 2024 10:02:03 -0400, Paul napisal:

>> 1. I went to the ffmpeg.org suggested location for Windows binaries
>>   https://ffmpeg.org/download.html#build-windows
>>   Which gave me two different choices
>>   https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/
>>   https://github.com/BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds/releases
>>
>>   It was hard to choose, for example, what's the difference between
>>   ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip at 57.3 MB
>>   ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl.zip at 134 MB

> For the Gyan one, you obviously want the statically compiled one.
>
> The larger static package, there are no DLLs to lug around.
> You can drop ffmpeg.exe or ffprobe.exe into your work folder
> and go to work.

Thank you for noticing my confusion when I was confronted with ffmpeg
binaries without any secret decoder ring to know how to choose from them.

I first looked at the gyan site but was thoroughly confused just staring at
it and trying to make any sense out of it, so I went to the github instead.

The github had a zip and a shared zip, but it gave me no clue how to choose
between them. At least you gave me a reason on the guyan site.

1. Going back to that confusing gyan site to learn from your wisdom
https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/

There are three sections.
a. Master builds
b. Release builds
c. Tools

Where I have no idea what they are talking about.

2. It's almost impossible to find the binary, because there are so many.
I searched for the word "static" since you had mentioned static
builds are better (and I'm fine with not having to deal with DLLs).

The word "static" only shows up twice, the second time being here:
"All builds are 64-bit, static and licensed as GPLv3; the release
full variant is also available as a shared build with development
files. A set of supplementary tools are available in the tools
section. These are updated infrequently and are licensed as LGPLv3."

So it seems everything is static so I still don't know what to get.

3. However, that description implies that the previous "shared" mystery
is apparently that the shared build "shares" developement files,
which of course I don't need.
(So now I know which of the github builds to get - i.e., non shared.)

4. Just above that description is this explanation of the gyan builds.
"the essentials build variant contains commonly used libraries,
whereas the full build variant also contains most of the remainder.
See the libraries section for a list. All variants contain all
internal components available for Windows."

So I still don't know which binary to get from the guyan site, where I
would agree with you that I don't want separate DLLs if I don't have to.

On 30/3/2024, Jan K. wrote:

> 3. However, that description implies that the previous "shared" mystery
> is apparently that the shared build "shares" developement files,
> which of course I don't need.
> (So now I know which of the github builds to get - i.e., non shared.)

Your interpretation may be wrong because the non shared binaries are larger
than the shared, so whatever is shared, makes it a lot smaller download.

On 3/29/2024 11:40 AM, Jan K. wrote:
> I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
> I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
>
> I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
> shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
>
> What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
> to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
>
> I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
> the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?

Shutter Encoder is a video compression tool specifically designed to do
exactly what you're asking for. Videos are best compressed by adjusting
the bitrate and resolution.

* Easy to use. Works as designed.
* Allows direct input of the 3 Mb size that you'd want to compress to,
and will automatically adjust the bitrate as needed
* Allows optional direct adjustment of bitrate
* Allows optional direct adjustment of resolution
* Will leave other characteristics of the video intact if they don't
affect the size
* Portable or setup downloads available
* Windows or MacOS

https://www.shutterencoder.com/en

On 2024-03-30 10:22, Paul wrote:
> On 3/29/2024 7:07 PM, Alan Browne wrote:
>> On 2024-03-29 12:40, Jan K. wrote:
>>> I don't want to put it on the cloud but I have a 30MB video of my baby that
>>> I want to email to people who may be on any platform so I need it ~3MB.
>>>
>>> I expect a loss of quality just as it would be if I had used Irfanview to
>>> shrink a 30MB image to ~3MB (cropping, resizing, quality, compression).
>>>
>>> What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
>>> to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
>>>
>>> I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
>>> the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?
>>
>> Handbrake.
>
> An acquired taste.

And a very good one. It works. It's free. It's well supported. It's
cross platform. Can run it with the GUI or with a command line (at
least on Mac and Linux) which I do invoking it from my own programs.

Does it have a learning curve? Sure - it also has pre-sets that will
satisfy most needs. If the target is 3MB from 30, it won't take more
than a few tries to get there. And at those sizes it won't take but a
few seconds per try.

--
“Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first;
nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.”
- Charles de Gaulle.

W Sat, 30 Mar 2024 16:05:18 -0500, kelown napisal:

>> What free tool can I use every once in a while on Windows that is designed
>> to really shrink a video final size using whatever methods are appropriate?
>>
>> I'm thinking it might crop the video or remove every other frame or change
>> the compression or remove the audio channel (which I don't need), or what?
>
> Shutter Encoder is a video compression tool specifically designed to do
> exactly what you're asking for. Videos are best compressed by adjusting
> the bitrate and resolution.
> * Easy to use. Works as designed.
> * Allows direct input of the 3 Mb size that you'd want to compress to,
> and will automatically adjust the bitrate as needed
> * Allows optional direct adjustment of bitrate
> * Allows optional direct adjustment of resolution
> * Will leave other characteristics of the video intact if they don't
> affect the size
> * Portable or setup downloads available
> * Windows or MacOS
> https://www.shutterencoder.com/en

Thanks for the suggestion of https://www.shutterencoder.com/en to shrink
a 30MB 13-second video to something smaller that can be more easily mailed.

I liked that it was advertised as "A converter designed by video editors".
Apparently it's free & open source donation ware, which uses these tools.
a. Bmxtranswrap <https://sourceforge.net/p/bmxlib/home/Home>
b. Dcraw <https://www.dechifro.org/dcraw>
c. Dvdauthor <https://dvdauthor.sourceforge.net>
d. Exiftool <https://exiftool.org>
e. Ffmpeg <https://ffmpeg.org>
f. Mediainfo <https://mediaarea.net/fr/MediaInfo>
g. Ncnn <https://github.com/xinntao/Real-ESRGAN-ncnn-vulkan>
h. tsMuxeR <https://github.com/justdan96/tsMuxer>
i. WeTransfer <https://developers.wetransfer.com>
j. Yt-dlp <https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp>
k. 7za <https://www.7-zip.org>

1. I went to https://www.shutterencoder.com/en to get both installers.
https://www.shutterencoder.com/Shutter%20Encoder%2018.0%20Windows%2064bits.exe
Name: Shutter Encoder 18.0 Windows 64bits.exe
Size: 105208712 bytes (100 MiB)
SHA256: D6474BF0832E404AE708B7CCFE5CC94DE33CA172F60CD8A76D6A7DFCBDE6C560

Portable Shutter Encoder 18.0 Windows 64bits.
https://www.shutterencoder.com/Shutter%20Encoder%2018.0%20Windows%2064bits.zip
Name: Shutter Encoder 18.0 Windows 64bits.zip
Size: 126161815 bytes (120 MiB)
SHA256: 352020C1860885E244B99B982B09CB9FB026CF3C04CE23E5098C94A22A527DD5

I extracted the portable zip file & made a shortcut in my menu folder.

2. I opened the 8-second raw file from the original Avidemux output.
Choose Function:
a. Without conversion
Cut without re-encoding, Replace audio, Rewrap, Conform, Merge,
Extract, Subtitling, Video inserts
b. Sound conversions
WAV, AIFF, FLAC, ALAC, MP3, AAC, AC3, Opus, Vorbis,
Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD
c. Editing codecs
DNxHD, DNxHR, Apple ProRes, QT Animation, GoPro CineForm,
Uncompressed
d. Output codecs
H.264, H.265, VP8, VP9, AV1
e. Broadcast codecs
XDCAM HD422, XDCAQM HD 35, AVC-Intra 100, XAVC, HAP
f. Old codecs
Theora, MPEG-2, MJPEG, Xvid, DV PAL, WMV, MPEG-1
g. Archiving codecs
FFV1
h. Image creation
JPEG, Image
i. Burn & rip
DVD, Blu-ray, DVD Rip
j. Analysis
Loudness & True Peak, Audio normalization, Cut detection,
Black detection, Media offline detection
k. Download
Web video

3. I wasn't sure what to do as you're supposed to know what you want.
So I decided to convert the video to H.265 using
ShutterEncoder:Choose function > Output codecs > H.265
Which gave me an output container format choice of
.mp4, .mov, .mkv, .avi, .flv, .f4v, .mpg, .ts, .m2ts

I left it at the default (H.265 -> .mp4) and it was at this
time that I noticed many "adjustments" that I left at defaults.

There were options for Rotation, Mirror, Force display,
Bitrate adjustment, Length adjustment, File size, 2Pass,
Max Quality, Image cropping, audio settings, fonts, colors,
backgrounds, subtitles, GPU decoding, GPU filtering,
Hardware acceleration, Image adjustment, Corrections,
Transitions, Advanced features like interlacing, etc.

4. I left everything at the defaults & clicked "Start function".
A percent meter slowly worked its way from 0% to 100% where it
was nice to see options for where to put the file and what extension
to use and there was even an option to "Work during inactivity".

Then it made a loud sound and said "Process completed".
03/29/2024 12:19 PM 12,613,296 20240325_raw.mp4
03/30/2024 07:24 PM 2,999,566 20240325_shutterencoder.mp4

The quality of the 3MB video was seemingly as good as the 12MB file.

Of course I only scratched the surface, but this seems to be a
good front end to ffmpeg the way I used it, as it shrank the video
to a quarter of the original size simply by using the H.265 codec.

What is nice though is that there is a "File size" option where
you can set the file size to whatever you want the result to be.

5. So I set the file size to 1MB, 2-Pass, Max Quality, which
automatically changed the bitrate from whatever it was to
Bitrate = 2147483647

And then I set the "Scale" from "Source 1920x1080" to "auto:720"
out of a list of scaling options from Source, AI real-life 4x,
AI real-life 2x, AKI animation 4x, AI animation 2x,
4096x2160, 3480x2160, 2560x1440, 1920x1080, 1440x1080, 1280x720,
1024x768, 1024x576, 854x480, 720x576, 640x360, 320x180, 3840:auto,
1920:auto, auto:2160, auto:1080, auto:720, 50%, 25%

6. When it made a loud sound and said "Process completed", I saw this.
03/29/2024 12:19 PM 12,613,296 20240325_raw.mp4
03/30/2024 07:24 PM 2,999,566 20240325_shutterencoder.mp4
03/30/2024 08:01 PM 77,304,748 20240325_H.265_1MB.mp4

Obviously I goofed but that's OK as experimenting will probably
uncover, over time, why setting it to 1MB exploded it to 77MB! :-)

Clearly this ShutterEncoder ffmpeg GUI is a keeper. Thanks!