You Should Start Compressing Videos on Your Phone

If you record a lot of videos of your pets, your loved ones and special moments, there is a good chance that your memories have made you miss storage at some point. Indeed, the videos take up a lot of space, but fortunately, there is a simple solution: compress your videos.

Why video on phones are a storage pork

It is no secret that videos occupy much more storage space than other media such as photos or music. Indeed, the videos are made up of many individual images (called “frames”) which are captured every second – generally 30 or 60 frames per second (FPS) – while simultaneously recording an audio track, which adds even more data.

Although video frames are compressed more effectively than autonomous images thanks to the effectiveness of video codecs (and because they are a lower resolution), high resolution videos shot on your phone always consume a large amount of space.

The quantity of space that a video occupies depends on the parameters of your camera, but it can increase considerably when recording in 4K and at a higher image frequency.

For example, going from 30 IPS to 60 IPS increases the file size by around 50 to 60%, and 4K occupies more than double storage compared to 1080p.

To put things in perspective, a 4K video turned to 30 frames per second represents approximately 150 MB at 200 MB if you use the H.265 / HEVC codec more efficient, or around 200 MB at 250 MB with the H.264 Codec.

So, if you only recorded a 5 -minute video per day on a 128 GB base storage phone with 80 GB of free storage, that would only take you around 2 to 3 months to fill it completely.

This 14 -second clip of my PC, recorded in 4K at 60 IPS, takes 89.2 MB before compression!

What happens when you don’t compress the videos

As you can probably guess, the storage of large videos on your phone without compressing them will fill your storage in no time. This means that you will have to delete and transfer your images, videos, applications and games to your computer or NAS if you want to save new videos.

This drawback is frustrating at home, but it is even worse if it happens in the middle of your vacation, and you do not have an SD card niche or another way of storing your precious new memories. By the way, a USB-C flash reader can be a life buoy in situations like these.

Another problem you may encounter with low storage is that your phone can slow down when it fills. If it is almost completely full, you could start discovering gels and application planting and synchronizing problems. The end result is that you are forced to release space by deleting videos or something else, such as applications, music and games.

Yet another complication is that you can lack space on your Google account if you have activated automatic backup on Google Photos. Since the storage on the photos is shared on all your Google services, this means that you will no longer be able to receive emails and attachments, download new files on Google Drive, or even create new Google Docs documents until you release space or pay a Google One subscription.

Even if your phone is not full, uncompressed videos are pain to manage. Since they occupy much more space, downloading them take more time and consumes more mobile data, which you download on social networks, messaging applications or other platforms. In addition, social media and cat applications always compress your videos.

Their compression algorithms often reduce video quality much more than if you compress the video yourself first. When you download a pre-compressed video, the application algorithm will detect that it is a smaller file and can apply less additional compression, which leads to better overall quality.

Video compression makes sense (and it’s easier than you think)

The first thing you can do to reduce the size of the video file is to go from video encoding H.264 to H.265. H.265 uses a more effective compression and considerably reduces file size while seeing so good or even better.

However, the change of codecs is only part of the solution. Even with H.265, the videos take up a lot of space, especially if they are 4K 60 images per second and long. Fortunately, modern compression algorithms can eliminate redundant or less visible visual data with a minimum impact on perceived image quality.

The reason why the compression works so well with the videos is that the advanced compression techniques delete repetitive and less important data which are difficult to perceive in motion.

If you are ready to exchange a little more image quality for a spectacular reduction of size, for example, 80 to 90%, you can apply a more aggressive compression. This means lowering resolution, reducing binary flow and even lowering audio quality. If your goal is simply to preserve a memory and you agree with a degraded video, I recommend this approach.

As for how to compress videos, there are many video compressors on the Play Store to choose. Certainly, most free versions are not so excellent to use because they tend to be cluttered with announcements. If you save a lot of videos, you should consider using the paid version.

On the other hand, free versions are good for occasional use or if you plan to compress longer videos. Some free tools that I tried and work well are according to the AI video compressor, the Panda video compress and the Tarrysoft video compressor. They can easily cut file sizes in half or more with a minimum impact on image quality.

But what happens if I told you that there could be an even better alternative to applications?

Programs on your PC can do much better to compress videos, and they will also do it much faster. This is how I do; In fact, I don’t even bother to completely transfer the compressed videos to my phone because I prefer to store them on my PC.

Handbrake and VLC (the multimedia player that you have probably used in high school) are two excellent free video compression tools. Both do a great job to reduce file size without considerably degrading video quality. In addition, as video compression is at high intensity of resources, it is more practical to unload the task on your PC or more powerful desktop computer rather than letting it slow down your phone when it runs in the background.

Compression of your videos is one of the simplest but most important ways to manage the limited storage space of your Android phone. Most of the time, you will not even be able to make the difference in image quality, but you will certainly notice the impact it has on your storage space.