Question 1

Is my video uploaded to a server?

Accepted Answer

No. The whole thing runs in your browser, on your own device — your video is never uploaded. The only network request is a one-time download of the media engine itself (not your video), which is then cached. Because of that one fetch the tool isn’t “fully offline”, but your actual video always stays local.

Question 2

Why is the first run slow, and why ~32 MB?

Accepted Answer

The first time you use any of our media tools, your browser downloads the ffmpeg engine once (about 32 MB) and caches it, so later runs start straight away. Compressing then runs on your own device’s processor — there’s a live progress bar — which is slower than a desktop app, especially for long or high-resolution clips. Short clips work best.

Question 3

How do the resolution and quality settings work?

Accepted Answer

Resolution scales the video down to 1080p, 720p or 480p (we never upscale, so picking a size larger than your source leaves it unchanged). Quality sets how hard it compresses — “High” keeps the most detail, “Smallest” trades detail for the smallest file. The result is an MP4 (H.264 video, AAC audio) that plays just about everywhere.

Question 4

My file barely got smaller (or got bigger) — why?

Accepted Answer

If a video is already heavily compressed, re-encoding it — especially at a high quality or full resolution — can give little saving or even make it larger. Choose a lower resolution and/or “Smallest” for a real reduction. If the result does come out larger than your original, we say so clearly and offer to keep your original instead of downloading the bigger file, so you never save a pointlessly larger video by accident.

Question 5

How long does it take, and is there a size limit?

Accepted Answer

There’s no hard limit, but in-browser video is single-threaded and genuinely slow, so the realistic sweet spot is short clips — under ~1–2 minutes or ~50 MB — which finish fastest. Large or long videos still work but can take 15+ minutes and a lot of memory (very big files may not finish). Before you start we show a warning sized to your file, and while it runs you get a live progress bar with elapsed time, a rough estimate and a Cancel button. For a big video, a desktop app will be much faster.

Question 6

Is it free?

Accepted Answer

Completely free — no sign-up, no watermark, and no limit on how many videos you compress.

Video Compressor

Frequently asked questions

Zip Files

Unzip Files

Video Converter

MP4 to MP3