Video compression app

[grim_d]

I'm fed up running out of space on my phone, it turns out video is the culprit. (30GB of videos of my daughter!).

"Uncompressed" mp4s are massive, they can be reduced more than 50% in file size with no loss of quality. (I have the originals backed up anyway)

I'm struggling to find an app to do the compressing, I want one that compresses then overwrites the original with all the metadata intact so they display in the calendar correctly.

Have tried about 5 apps now and they all have the same issues with removing metadata so I end up with a zillion videos from "today"

On Android by the way.

Any suggestions?

 

[gaz1]

dont just computer back them up and then you have them as a back up and clear your phone of videos as well

I have loads of pics and videos and music even i have to back up loads and i have 20 years of files backed up

 

[8ob]

Dump them onto youtube privately and then reload onto your phone.

Bob

 

[gaz1]

Dump them onto youtube privately and then reload onto your phone.

Bob

dont

if any site decides that they want payment for your gb files then you loose everything just like the other pic site that ruined everyones pics on forums

im not a fool i prefer my own back ups and also another back up at least its x2 if one hard drive fails i havent lost the files

i dont trust online sites even the payed ones

 

[grim_d]

dont just computer back them up and then you have them as a back up and clear your phone of videos as well

I have loads of pics and videos and music even i have to back up loads and i have 20 years of files backed up

I have everything from every computer and phone ever, I've never lost anything, double redundancy backups.

I want to keep these videos on my phone because we do watch them and have a giggle (she's only 1) there's just no need for the filesize, crazy that there's no built in compression.

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

I have everything from every computer and phone ever, I've never lost anything, double redundancy backups.

I want to keep these videos on my phone because we do watch them and have a giggle (she's only 1) there's just no need for the filesize, crazy that there's no built in compression.

Dump em on your computer.
Batch convert them with something like Handbrake and out them back on your phone

Will take a while on a decent PC let alone a phone

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

I have everything from every computer and phone ever, I've never lost anything, double redundancy backups.

I want to keep these videos on my phone because we do watch them and have a giggle (she's only 1) there's just no need for the filesize, crazy that there's no built in compression.

And look at your video settings may be able to reduce the file sizes as you record by downgrading settings

 

[grim_d]

Dump em on your computer.
Batch convert them with something like Handbrake and out them back on your phone

Will take a while on a decent PC let alone a phone

It doesn't take long really, it's just the saving of them that's the issue. Embarrassingly my phone is considerably more powerful than our laptop.

And look at your video settings may be able to reduce the file sizes as you record by downgrading settings

Already have, recording in 1080p rather than 4k.

We are talking 400mb for a 2 minute video, it's just absurd.

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

It doesn't take long really, it's just the saving of them that's the issue. Embarrassingly my phone is considerably more powerful than our laptop.



Already have, recording in 1080p rather than 4k.

We are talking 400mb for a 2 minute video, it's just absurd.

Does it not go lower. Pointless recoding them at 1080 then converting them.

Looking at my settings here probably not.

Beauty of chucking them on the computer and batch converting overnight is you just point it at a folder and click go

Keep the hi res on the laptop HDD and chuck the low rea back on your phone .

 

[8ob]

dont

if any site decides that they want payment for your gb files then you loose everything just like the other pic site that ruined everyones pics on forums

im not a fool i prefer my own back ups and also another back up at least its x2 if one hard drive fails i havent lost the files

i dont trust online sites even the payed ones

I am quite long in the tooth and I have never lost anything on Youtube or Photobucket

Bob

 

[gaz1]

for me its down to what i need in video

so my setting is 640x480 as its only a show video 20 minutes 314mb size of file mp4

keep videos i will set higher but im aware i would need to back them up on the computer

 

[grim_d]

Does it not go lower. Pointless recoding them at 1080 then converting them.

Looking at my settings here probably not.

Beauty of chucking them on the computer and batch converting overnight is you just point it at a folder and click go

Keep the hi res on the laptop HDD and chuck the low rea back on your phone .

No it has normal (1080p) and 4k. There are probably more in other camera Apps but can't be bothered with that

Not looking to convert, just compress, have proved it can be done it's just frustrating it doesn't keep metadata.

Just trying to avoid the long winded process of putting on computer every time I do a video.

 

[sako243]

We are talking 400mb for a 2 minute video, it's just absurd

No it's not...

I appreciate there are lots of tricks with relating to bits per pixel, colours that humans store etc., but this is just a simple example to illustrate the problem why I'm saying it's not.

1080p is a resolution of 1920x1080 = 2 million pixels (2,073,600)
3 bytes per pixel for the colour results in 6.2MB per frame (6,220,800 bytes)
Lets say a typical 30 frames per second means 178MB per second (186,624,000 bytes)
2 minutes recording therefore equals approximately 20GB of raw data coming off the camera sensor (22,394,880,000 bytes)

If you're producing 400MB files for 2 minutes of recording then your phone has already compressed that down to approximately 2% of it's original size... (Technically it'll almost certainly be dedicated hardware that has done the compression).

It's worth pointing out that MP4 is not actually a compression format - it's a container. The video will be compressed using a different algorithm, almost certainly H.264 or H.265. It's not a technical read but this article is really worth a read for describing all the magic that's going on behind the scenes: https://sidbala.com/h-264-is-magic/

Potential solution to your problem:
Anyway that was an interesting (for me at least) diversion. If you're on Android presumably you have a Gmail account? Have you had a play around with Google Photos? You get a certain amount of storage for free and the app on your phone can automatically upload and free up space on your phone overnight. By default it uploads a slightly further compressed version but you can turn that off but it will eat through your allowance more quickly.

I think it's about £15 / year for more storage - I had so many photos at high resolution and emails that I couldn't be arsed to sort them out I just decided to pay the £15 / year for a professional company to handle backups etc.

 

[grim_d]

@sako243

It absolutely is absurd given what's possible (a YouTube video at 1080p and 2 minutes long would be around 150mb, obviously there's a million variables there) Note the word uncompressed was in quotations, I know it's already compressed (h.264 since you asked, the native camera app on this doesn't do h.265 AFAIK), I might not be up to speed on the latest cutting edge tech but I used to be in my adolescence!)

Anyway, it's a pixel phone I have so I have unlimited cloud storage for photos etc but I don't don't want to have to download them any time I want to use them. (They are all already backed up to there, as well as the computer...and an external drive )

Actual overall storage space isn't an issue, just onboard my phone, I was just looking for a quick and easy way to do what I wanted without having to mess around with the laptop.

 

[sako243]

Admittedly not up to speed on latest compression but I wouldn't be surprised if YouTube isn't "native" 1080p. What I mean is that I suspect they play a hell of a lots of tricks on lossy compression that's not going to be noticeable. Equally they probably have upped the gap between key-frames which will impact on re-winding videos etc. but not for the vast majority of users.

Might I suggest that you try compressing a video / playing with settings on a PC and see whether you can actually get the files any smaller? If you can then it's worthwhile pursuing - otherwise I think you're not going to gain a massive benefit.

 

[grim_d]

@sako243

Unlikely to be native but just an example of what's possible, it's only home videos after all.

Compressing them isn't an issue, up to 50% in some cases, it's the saving of them with my preferences without the rigmarole of the pc.....as per my OP.

 

[gaz1]

something i learnt a long time ago be very careful with settings and compression with codecs when ripping films to mp4 get it wrong and you had spent hours ripping them for nothing

many codecs are simple to use and many programs use preset requirements to make it easier

but what your asking for is something which isnt attainable via a phone app is by a pc but not via a phone app

if you want better then reduce your file size by using the codecs settings within your phone

1080 is fine but not when you want to keep the size of screen its not so reduce the size of the screen that would be your resouloutin of screensize then it really plays with the size of file that your saving

im not being insultive here its you thats wants to keep it big and yet your moaning about it having big files sizes and yet your not wanting to use the pc when infact you could reduce your file sizes much better within your phone settings

and yet your moaning about losing meta details the video holds

if you lowered it to a reasonable level you would have what you want and a reasonable file size and your meta data all included on the file without the hassle of a phone app or a pc doing the same job

 

[grim_d]

but what your asking for is something which isnt attainable via a phone app is by a pc but not via a phone app

if you want better then reduce your file size by using the codecs settings within your phone

1080 is fine but not when you want to keep the size of screen its not so reduce the size of the screen that would be your resouloutin of screensize then it really plays with the size of file that your saving

im not being insultive here its you thats wants to keep it big and yet your moaning about it having big files sizes and yet your not wanting to use the pc when infact you could reduce your file sizes much better within your phone settings

and yet your moaning about losing meta details the video holds

if you lowered it to a reasonable level you would have what you want and a reasonable file size and your meta data all included on the file without the hassle of a phone app or a pc doing the same job

That's why I'm asking though? It's not an unreasonable request, can do it with a photograph no problem.

I'm not moaning. I've already established that I can compress them further, I don't know how many times I need to say that's not the issue!

Im no software dev (the last coding I did was at college about 16 years ago!) but with everything software can do these days are you really telling me that it cannot compress a file and keep or rewrite the metadata? If I can do it manually (which I can) then it can be automated. I was merely asking if anyone knew of an app that did such to save me having to trawl through the myriad of options.

As said before my phone only has two options for video quality...high (1080p) and 4k, even if it did it doesn't change the size of those already made...

 

[gaz1]

what phone have you got ?

would be my question

 

[grim_d]

what phone have you got ?

would be my question

Pixel 2. I'm sure third party camera Apps will allow it but I'm not up for that.

To end the thread...anyone know an app for what I want? No? Ok cool.