Question 1

How do I compress a video to under 25 MB to send by email?

Accepted Answer

Drop the file in and type 25 into the target box, or press the Email 25 MB button, which does the same thing. Before anything runs, the row under the file says what that number means for this video: 25 MB across twelve minutes is about 280 kbps for the picture and the sound together, which is thin for 1080p and comfortable for a phone clip of a minute. The file is then encoded a little under the target, measured while it is written, and written again at a corrected rate if it is heading over, so what you download is under 25 MB rather than near it. If 25 MB cannot hold the video at the resolution it was shot at, the page drops the resolution and says so, and you can overrule that on the file's own row.

Question 2

What is Discord's file size limit?

Accepted Answer

10 MB without Nitro, 50 MB on Nitro Basic and 500 MB on Nitro. The part that catches people out is that the limit covers the whole message rather than each file, so three 4 MB clips in one message add up to 12 MB and get refused. The 10 MB figure is the current one: it came down from 25 MB in 2024, which is why plenty of advice still quotes the old number. Press the Discord button and the target is set to 10 MB, then every file is checked against it. For a screen recording of a few minutes that is comfortable at 720p, and for a 4K clip it usually is not. The row tells you which of the two you have before you spend the minutes.

Question 3

Does compressing a video lose quality?

Accepted Answer

Yes, always, because that is what compression is: detail is thrown away to make the file smaller, and the only question is how much and where you notice it. What you control is where the loss lands. Give a picture roughly a tenth of a bit per pixel per frame and an ordinary clip is hard to fault; give it half that and fast movement blocks up first, then fine texture. That is why your target is turned into a bitrate and shown to you before anything runs rather than after. If you need a file smaller without touching the picture at all, compression is the wrong operation: cutting out the part you do not need removes real seconds of video and costs nothing in quality, and it often saves more than compressing harder does.

Question 4

How does it know the file will come out under the size I asked for?

Accepted Answer

By measuring rather than by trusting the arithmetic. A file's size is its bitrate times its duration, so your target and the length of the video give a bitrate to aim at. The catch is that an encoder treats a bitrate as a request: on content it finds hard it goes over, by about a fifth at 1080p and by a great deal more at 4K. So the encode is aimed deliberately under your number, the bytes on disk are watched against the progress while it runs, and a pass that is clearly heading over is abandoned partway and started again at a rate corrected from what was actually measured rather than guessed at a second time. If the finished file still misses, the row says so and by how much, next to what you asked for.

Question 5

Should I lower the resolution or just compress harder?

Accepted Answer

Below a certain bitrate, fewer pixels look better than harder compression, and where that line falls is arithmetic rather than taste. 1080p needs somewhere around 2.5 Mbps to look clean and 720p needs around 1.2, so if your target only affords 900 kbps, a 720p file made from your source will look sharper than a 1080p one. That is why the resolution setting starts on 'Drop it only if the size needs it': for each file the page works out which side of the line your number falls on, picks accordingly, and says which resolution it chose. Set it to keep the original size if you would rather have all the pixels and accept a softer picture, or pick 1080p, 720p or 480p yourself.

Question 6

Is there a size limit, and how long does a big video take?

Accepted Answer

No limit: not on file size, not on length, not on how many go in at once, and no allowance to use up. The file is read in slices off your disk rather than loaded whole, so a 4 GB recording never has to fit in memory. Time is the real cost, and it depends on the resolution. With a hardware encoder, 1080p runs at several times real time, so a ten-minute clip is a couple of minutes. A 4K source runs close to its own duration or worse, which is worth knowing before you start one. Each file shows its progress as it goes, and they run one at a time, because the encoder is a single piece of silicon.

Question 7

Can I compress a whole folder of videos at once?

Accepted Answer

Press Choose a folder and pick the folder itself rather than the files inside it, which is what a camera roll or a set of screen recordings is once it is sitting on your disk. Everything in it that holds video joins the list, and the photos, thumbnails and text files stay where they are. The target and the settings apply to all of them, and any file that needs something different gets its own settings on its own row, with a button to put it back on the shared ones. Each file is checked against the target separately, so a folder where half the clips are already small enough comes back with those untouched. When they are done, take the lot as a single ZIP.

Question 8

Do my videos get uploaded anywhere?

Accepted Answer

No, and there is no server here that could receive one. Your file is read, decoded, compressed and written back out by your own browser on your own machine. If you would rather check than take that on trust, open the network tab and compress something: nothing goes out. It matters here because of what people put through a compressor, which is usually a phone recording, a client's footage, or a screen capture of something internal. It is also why the size of your file is nobody's problem but your own device's: there is no upload to sit through first and nothing that refuses a file for being too big. Clear the list afterwards and nothing is left behind.

Question 9

Can I compress a MOV file, or an MKV?

Accepted Answer

Both, and MP4, M4V, WebM and the MTS files a camcorder writes as well. The format is read from the file rather than picked from a menu. To compress a MOV off an iPhone or a camera, drop it in and it comes back as a MOV of the size you asked for. To compress an MKV, the same, with the picture written as H.264 or H.265 and the sound carried across untouched wherever the budget leaves room for it. One thing worth knowing about an MKV: its subtitle tracks stay in the original file, because everything here is decoded and written again from scratch. If the subtitles are the point, moving the file into a different container carries them across, and that is a different job on its own page.

Question 10

Why won't my compressed video play on my TV or an older phone?

Accepted Answer

Because of the codec rather than the size. H.265, also called HEVC, is about a third smaller than H.264 for the same picture, which is why it is offered here, and it is also what an older television, an older phone and a Windows machine without the codec installed will refuse to open. H.264 is the default for that reason: the file is going somewhere that has to play it, and H.264 plays everywhere, including in a browser, in an editor, on a projector and in most upload forms. Take H.265 when you know what is receiving the file handles it, such as a recent iPhone or Mac, and when that extra third genuinely matters. A smaller file nobody can watch is not the smaller file you wanted.

Question 11

Can I compress an AVI or a WMV file here?

Accepted Answer

No, and the reason is worth having rather than a shrug. Drop one in and its row says what it holds, which is usually Xvid, DivX or Motion JPEG in an AVI and Windows Media Video in a WMV. No browser ships a decoder for any of those, so there is nothing here that can read the picture back into pixels, and compressing means doing exactly that before writing it out again. It is a limit of what a browser can do rather than a setting to go looking for. VLC opens both and can save one out as an MP4, and HandBrake converts them properly on Windows, macOS and Linux. A file saved out of either one works here afterwards.

Question 12

Do I need HandBrake for this?

Accepted Answer

For a one-off, no. Typing a number and downloading a file is quicker than installing anything, and the size arithmetic a desktop encoder leaves to you is done here for you. HandBrake is the right tool for the other shape of the job: re-encoding a library rather than a file, presets you want to save and reuse, filters, deinterlacing, chapter handling, or a codec no browser can write. It is free and it runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. The trade is the one you would expect: more control and more to learn, against a page that is already open.

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