Hi Tom. Can you clarify the Run through Handbrake tip? iMovie is pretty easy to use for basic editing without spending hours and hours learning a more advanced program. Running one program through another sounds more complicated than I want to try.
I just want basic editing and a quality picture that’s small enough in file size to share with friends via email or text. - Brian
Hi Brain,
“Run through” might not have been clear. Process your video as you normally would in iMovie. Then, launch Handbrake. Click “Open Source” and navigate to the location of your iMovie output. If you have multiple video files that you will process to the same specs and output to the same location you can “Add to Queue.” Pick a preset from the drop-down menu and identify the Save As location. Hit Start and go do something while Handbrake is working. I usually start with 1080p files from the camera and output at the same size from iMovie/Movavi. I load them into Handbrake and use the Fast 1080p30 preset and the resulting file is about half the MB/GB of the original. Explore the presets … there are a lot to choose from, but I do virtually everything as I’ve described. Good luck.
Video compression can be a whole speciality field by itself. There’s a huge ton of options if you want to dig past the default settings.
One way around it is just to send it up to YouTube - it’ll convert it into several different sizes for playback over various connections and screen sizes.
Be sure you’re not exporting more resolution than you need - few middle-aged (and above) eyes get any benefit from 4k. 1080P is fine, or even 720P for smaller screens.
And yes, as mentioned, bitrate is one easy parameter to fiddle with and see where it starts cutting into your video quality.
Beyond that, there be dragons, best to stay out of the subtle aspects and settings… I used to fiddle with them for ages, 20+ years ago when trying to convert video down to something that could be dragged over a dialup modem back when not everyone even had the same types of playback software… not fond memories!
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Hi T,
Thanks, I’ll take a look at Movavi. Just looking for a simple way to reduce file size and retain decent quality for sharing 1-3 minute flight videos.
Brian
Use VN for android/ios
Can you elaborate on VN?
Vlog now v. 1.35 / 2.06
