Phone videos are big: a minute of 4K video can be 300 MB or more. That's too large for most email services and slow to send in chats. Here's how to make a video smaller without it looking bad.
Common size limits
| Where | Typical limit |
|---|---|
| Email attachments (Gmail, Outlook) | About 20 to 25 MB |
| Chat apps | They compress videos heavily when you send them as media; sending as a document keeps the quality but uses more data |
| Website and form uploads | Often 10 to 100 MB; check the page |
What makes a video file big
- Resolution: 4K has four times as many pixels as 1080p, and nine times as many as 720p.
- Bitrate: how much data each second of video uses. Phones use high bitrates to keep the most detail.
- Length: twice as long is twice as big.
- Frame rate: 60 frames per second needs more data than 30.
How to make it smaller
- Cut what you don't need. Trimming the start and end with Trim Video is the easiest saving, with no loss of quality.
- Lower the resolution. 720p looks sharp on phones and laptops and is a fraction of the size of 4K.
- Compress it. The video compressor re-encodes the video efficiently. 720p at medium quality suits chats; for email, try 480p or low quality, and check the size it shows before you send.
- Remove the sound if it isn't needed, with Mute Video.
Other ways to share big videos
For long or high-quality videos, upload to a cloud drive (Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud, Dropbox) and send a link instead. The person gets the original quality, and you avoid size limits altogether.
Keep the original
Compression always throws away some detail. Keep the original video on your phone or computer, and send the smaller copy.