Compress video like a pro with Handbrake
If you work with bulky video files, this one’s for you.
You’ve spent days, weeks, or even months perfecting your latest video project. Your animations, lighting, colour-grading and sound design are all on-point. You can just about see the light at the end of the tunnel but then comes the time to render the beast. Fast-forward another few days, the file size is almost as big as the bags under your eyes and you’ve then got the added ordeal of sending over your files for review. Your router’s on the brink again, video upload has been sitting steady at 15% for the last two hours and now your Nan’s crying.
We’ve all been there and the struggle is real, but there is a little tool that can help.
Handbrake is the unsung hero that every animator and video producer needs to know about. If you haven’t met HandBrake yet, allow me to introduce you to this little lifesaver. It’s a free, open-source video transcoder and compression tool available for Mac, Windows and Linux. It might not look the part with its pineapple and cocktail app icon (what is that all about by the way?), but it does allow you to dramatically reduce file sizes without compromising quality.
It’s not going to speed up your initial render times, but it will help you save a tonne of time and money when it comes to sharing files with clients, publishing your videos online, especially when you’re dealing with large volumes of video content.
Here are some of the stand-out features you can expect:
1. Compression and resizing
Handbrake offers brilliant control over video compression and resizing making sending files faster and improving page load speeds for pages that feature large video content. You can adjust parameters such as bitrate, resolution, and quality settings to achieve significant reductions in file size without any noticeable loss in video quality. You’ll also find a built-in live preview feature that allows you to see the effects of your chosen compression settings in real-time.
I tend to run my video compression at a constant bitrate of around 20–25, reducing file size of like-for-like formats such as .mp4 by around 50% and often much more. It’s seriously impressive.
2. Batch Processing
If you’re working with large volumes of video content, Handbrake allows you to set your required parameters and render your files all at once. It’s super fast, so you likely won’t be waiting long before you can package everything up for sending on or uploading.
3. Intuitive Interface
Whether you’re choosing from a range of predefined presets, defining your own parameters, or hitting the start button on your exports, the UI is so easy to use that you really can’t go wrong. If you do get stuck, there’s a tonne of resources online to help you along the way.
To put it simply, Handbrake rapidly compresses videos, leaving you with flawless video quality and impressively small file sizes that make sending and uploading fast, and your web pages faster.
If you want to download Handbrake and give it a spin for yourself, you can find it here on their website or on Github. Cheers to that.🍹
Written by Charles Tostevin, Founder of Charles Collective — A digital graphic design studio based in Guernsey.
