Compress videos without uploading them

A video’s file size is mostly decided by its bitrate: how many bits are spent on every second of footage. Phones and cameras record at very high bitrates – often 15–50 Mbps – so the video survives editing. For watching and sharing, a fraction of that looks the same.

Asset Compressor re-encodes the video with a modern codec (H.264 by default, so it plays everywhere) at a bitrate chosen for its resolution and frame rate. The bitrate is never set higher than the original’s, and if a compressed file would still not be smaller, you get the original back untouched.

“By quality” is the easiest choice: High is nearly indistinguishable from the original, Balanced typically cuts phone videos by 60–80%, and Small or Smallest trade visible detail for much smaller files.

“By file size” works backwards from a limit. Asset Compressor divides the size you enter by the video’s length to find the bitrate, reserves a little room for audio and the container, and lowers the resolution automatically when a small target would otherwise look blocky. If a file still lands slightly over the target, it is re-encoded once more with a corrected bitrate.

A 4K frame has four times the pixels of 1080p. If the video will be watched on a phone, in a chat or on a website, 1080p or 720p looks just as good and needs far less data. Likewise, 60 fps footage of something that isn’t fast-moving can drop to 30 fps with no visible downside.

Both options are in the settings panel, together with trimming and removing the audio track – often the quickest way to make a long recording small enough to share.

Online video compressors usually upload your file, process it on a server and make you download it again – slow for large videos and a privacy risk for personal footage. Asset Compressor uses your browser’s built-in WebCodecs API, which taps the same hardware video encoder your phone or computer uses for screen recording, so there is no upload and no queue.

Chrome, Edge, Opera and Samsung Internet, Safari 16.4 or newer and Firefox 130 or newer use fast, hardware-accelerated encoding. Other browsers fall back to a slower compatibility mode that still runs entirely on your device.