Conerting MOV to smaller size

[harishkumar09]

I have a 1.2 GB .MOV file which I want to upload to YouTube. It is a video of an interview with a prominent personality. I want to reduce the file size as much as possible without losing quality. I want to know what is the best video format to compress and upload.

Thanks in advance guys and gals -

[Baldrick]

Please give more information than just 1.2gb, what is the running time, video resolution?

But you can easily shrink it with for example handbrake, open the mov, choose mp4, under the video tab set it to h264/avc video and the desired output file size(try different sizes and compare) , under audio tab set it to aac audio and convert.

[harishkumar09]

Please give more information than just 1.2gb, what is the running time, video resolution?

But you can easily shrink it with for example handbrake, open the mov, choose mp4, under the video tab set it to h264/avc video and the desired output file size(try different sizes and compare) , under audio tab set it to aac audio and convert.

Hi Baldrick, thank you very much for your prompt response.

Running Time = 9.00 mins to 10:00 mins

Video Resolution = 960 x 540

Under Video Tab, the only options I am getting are H.264(x264).

Also I remember using it once and the file extension was .m4v (and not mp4) and the resulting well compressed file (almost to one-tenth of the original size) had video artifacts in the first 5-10 seconds during opening titles, but disappeared by the time the speaker came on the video. But I would not like to have those artifacts as it looks very unprofessional.

Also I wonder if YouTube accepts .m4v extension files for upload.

[Baldrick]

h264=avc so select h264(x264). The x264 is the h264 encoder that is used in handbrake. Most free converters are based on it.

If you get lots of artifacts INCREASE the bitrate or the output file size.

And yes youtube accepts m4v or else it work fine to just rename it to mp4.


You can also try other free mov to mp4(h264) converters like avidemux, mpeg streamclip. And to get smaller file size adjust the bitrate/data rate. BUt lower bitrate=lower quality.

[harishkumar09]

Thank you very much Baldrick, that was very helpful indeed.