Category: basic knowledge

The Best Video Compression Format: A Complete Guide

January 9, 2025 / Fei Y / 0 Comments

Video formats and file sizes are often confusing for most people. When you watch a video, you rarely notice any difference between formats like MP4, AVI, or MKV. Yet, the moment you try to share or upload a video, format compatibility becomes a critical factor.

On the other hand, video size can be equally perplexing—how can a high-resolution video sometimes be smaller than one shot on your iPhone? These inconsistencies make it challenging to understand what actually affects video size and format.

This blog will clarify the relationship between video formats and codecs, explaining their roles in video quality, compatibility, and file size. By the end, you’ll have a clearer picture of what matters most when optimizing videos for storage, sharing, or streaming

Video format has minimal impact on compression size.

I know the conclusion above sound strange enough but I will try to explain what are all these concepts about. Please read on!

What Exactly is Video Format?

At first glance, video formats like MP4 or AVI may seem straightforward—you might recognize them as the file extensions on your videos. But what exactly is MP4, and how is it different from AVI? Why do we need multiple formats? To understand this, we need to dive into what a video format actually is and its role in video files.

Video Format: The Container

A video format is essentially a container for the actual encoded video images and audio. Think of it as a package that binds a silent video with its corresponding audio, along with additional information. For instance, an MP4 file is structured with three main components:

Video: The encoded visual content, often compressed using a specific codec.
Audio: The corresponding sound, also encoded separately.
Metadata: Supporting information like time alignment between video and audio, subtitles, file descriptions, and more.

Differences Between Formats: Mostly Metadata Parts

The primary distinction between video formats, such as MP4 and AVI, lies in the way metadata is handled and the codecs they support. This metadata determines how the video and audio are synchronized and displayed, but it has minimal impact on file size. In fact, converting a video from one format to another will rarely change the file size significantly because the bulk of the size comes from the encoded video and audio data within the container.

Why So Many Formats?

The abundance of video formats stems from different industry standards and the competing needs of technology companies over time. For example:

AVI: One of the earliest formats, developed by Microsoft in the early 1990s, was widely used for compatibility with Windows.
MOV: Introduced by Apple, this format became standard for macOS and iOS ecosystems.
MP4: Based on an open standard, it quickly gained popularity for its versatility, efficiency, and cross-platform support.

Over time, MP4 has become the most widely supported and used format, thanks to its balance of compatibility, compression efficiency, and ability to handle rich metadata. This ubiquity makes it the go-to choice for everything from streaming to file sharing.

What Determines the Size of a Video Then?

While the video format acts as the container, the factors that truly determine the size of a video are the way its content is encoded and compressed. Three main elements come into play:

1. Video Codec

A video codec is the technology used to compress and decompress the visual data in a video. It is responsible for reducing the size of raw video footage by identifying and removing redundancies without (ideally) compromising perceptible quality.

Popular codecs include:

H.264 (AVC): The most widely used codec, known for its balance between compression efficiency and quality.
H.265 (HEVC): A more advanced codec that offers up to 50% better compression than H.264 but requires more processing power.
AV1: An emerging codec with excellent compression efficiency, aimed at reducing file sizes for streaming and storage.

The choice of codec significantly affects file size—modern codecs like H.265 and AV1 can create much smaller files compared to older codecs like MPEG-2 while maintaining similar quality.

2. Image Content and Resolution

The actual content of the video and its resolution play a major role in file size:

Content Complexity: A video with fast-moving scenes or lots of detail (e.g., an action movie) requires more data to encode compared to static or low-motion scenes (e.g., a talking head).
Resolution: Higher resolutions (e.g., 4K) have more pixels to encode, which directly increases file size. For example, a 4K video will typically be much larger than a 1080p version of the same content.

3. Coding Method:

Bitrate: The amount of data used to encode one second of video. Higher bitrates result in better quality but larger files.
Constant Bitrate (CBR): Uses a fixed data rate, which can waste storage for simple scenes.
Variable Bitrate (VBR): Adjusts the data rate dynamically based on scene complexity, leading to better compression efficiency.
Frame Rate: The number of frames per second (e.g., 30fps or 60fps). Higher frame rates improve smoothness but also increase file size.
Compression Techniques: Advanced methods, such as predictive encoding, analyze and store only the differences between frames, significantly reducing file size.

You can learn about why those matters in this blog about how large a video should be

Try Redpandacompress to Compress your video

Compressing videos can feel overwhelming with so many technical aspects to consider—formats, codecs, resolution, and more. That’s where Redpandacompress.com steps in, making the process simple and effective for everyone.

1. Use MP4 Format

MP4 is the most versatile and widely supported video format available today. Whether you’re sharing a video on social media, uploading to a cloud storage service, or playing it on various devices, MP4 ensures compatibility across platforms. Redpandacompress automatically saves your compressed videos in this reliable format, so you never have to worry about format conflicts.

2. Auto Compression for Optimal Size and Quality

Redpandacompress uses smart algorithms to determine the best size for your video without sacrificing quality. By analyzing your video’s content, codec, and resolution, it ensures the file is as small as possible while preserving its visual and audio integrity. Whether you need a high-quality video for streaming or a smaller file for quick sharing, Redpandacompress handles it all seamlessly.

With just a few clicks, you can take the guesswork out of video compression and enjoy optimized videos that are easy to share, store, and upload. Try Redpandacompress.com today and experience hassle-free video compression!

Fei Y

Fei is a skilled software engineer. He previously worked at Google and now at a startup. His expertise includes web media processing, cloud architecture, complex algorithms, and AI training and deployment. Beyond work, Fei enjoys diving into new knowledge and is a big fan of strategy games.

blog.redpandacompress.com

How Large Should a HD 5 Minute Video Be?

January 1, 2025 / Fei Y

Video size is often illusive and random to most people. Large, long HD films may only be several hundred MB, while a quick, daily-shot video from your phone could also be several hundred MB. This unpredictability is compounded by the common belief that reducing video size inevitably lowers the quality, which can make things even more confusing.

In this article, I’ll explain what’s behind the video size myth and help you understand how large a video should be, giving you more clarity the right size for your HD 5 minute video.

What is a Video and What is Video Compression?

A video is essentially a sequence of images, often referred to as frames, that are displayed rapidly in succession to create the illusion of motion. Depending on the video’s frame rate (fps), these images are shown at a rate of 30 frames per second (fps) or higher. This means that for every second of video, there are 30 individual images playing in quick succession.

Now, imagine trying to store all of these frames in their raw form. Let’s break it down with a simple example:

One 1080p Image	One Second of 1080p Video ( 30 fps )	One Minute of 1080p Video ( 60 seconds )
1MB	30MB	1,800MB ( 1.8GB)

Clearly, storing video in this raw format would be incredibly inefficient and take up a huge amount of storage space. Fortunately, there’s a more efficient way to store video: compression.

Video Compression

The key to making videos smaller lies in recognizing the similarities between consecutive frames. In most cases, the images from one frame to the next are very similar. For example, if you’re watching a video of someone walking, their body position will be slightly different from one frame to the next, but the background and most of the image will remain the same.

To capitalize on this, video compression techniques store only the differences between consecutive frames rather than storing each frame in full. In simple terms, only one full image among few seconds is saved, and the following frames only store the changes or differences from those full images. This technique is known as video compression.

What are the Factors that Affect the Video Size

Video Codec

While the concept of video compression sounds simple, the real challenge lies in identifying these similarities. This task is the job of video engineers who design compression algorithms, which is what we know as video codecs. These are the algorithms that figure out how to compress the video by detecting similarities between frames. Common codecs include H.264, HEVC (H.265), VP8, and VP9.

When you watch or upload a video, these codecs are typically packed into formats like MP4. Most of the time, you don’t need to worry about which codec is being used. However, newer codecs tend to offer better compression ratios. For example, HEVC (which is newer than H.264) can compress video more efficiently while preserving higher quality.

Video Content and Scene Complexity

Aside from the algorithm used, the content of the video itself plays a huge role in determining its file size. Here’s why:

• Still Images / Low Motion: In videos where very little is moving (like a still image with minimal changes between frames), the compression algorithm can achieve a very high compression ratio. This allows it to reduce the file size significantly without losing much quality.

• Rapid Movement / Complex Scenes: On the flip side, videos with rapid movement or complex scenes (like sports footage) present a challenge for compression. Since the frames differ greatly from one another, it’s harder for the algorithm to find similarities between them. As a result, the compression ratio will be lower. Further attempts to compress the video may reduce the image quality significantly.

Why Are iPhone Videos So Large?

If you’ve ever wondered why videos shot on your phone end up being so large? The answer lies in how your mobile device handles video encoding. Unlike professional video encoding softwares on computers, most smartphones (including iPhones) use hardware encoding that compress video at a constant bitrate. This means that, regardless of how much or little movement is in the video, the device applies a consistent level of compression across the entire video.

Hardware encoding doesn’t take full advantage of analyzing similarities between frames. It is designed because mobile devices usually lack the computational power to do such in-depth analysis on the fly. Consequently, videos from mobile devices may be larger than expected, and re-encoding or compressing the video later can often yield a much better file size with minimal quality loss. Read more about our blog upon how to compress a video on iPhone.

How Large a 5-Minute HD Video Should Be?

The truth is, the size of a 5-minute HD video can vary greatly. As much as it might sound unhelpful, the answer really is it depends. The file size is influenced by a number of factors:

1. The Video Codec: Different codecs offer different levels of compression. For example, HEVC (H.265) will compress the video more efficiently than H.264, which means you can expect a smaller file size with similar quality.

2. Motion and Similarity Between Frames: Videos with a lot of movement or changes from frame to frame will have a larger file size, as the compression algorithm will have a harder time finding similarities to reduce the data. On the other hand, static scenes with minimal movement will compress more effectively and yield a smaller file size.

3. Compression Methods: Not all compression methods are equal. If you don’t use the most efficient compression method for your video, you might end up with a file that’s much larger than it needs to be.

In that sense, some platforms provide general guidelines for video sizes:

	Netflix	Youtube
Bitrate Suggests	5Mbps-7Mbps	8Mbps-12Mbps
HD 5min Video Size Based on Bitrate	~225MB	~375MB
Reference	Link	Link

However, these guidelines don’t necessarily apply to your specific video. Your video’s content, motion, and codec choice will all affect the final file size.

Redpandacompress’s Automated Compression

To make things easier, Redpandacompress provides an automated compression tool that analyzes your video specifically and determines the most suitable compression settings. This ensures that you get the best possible size without compromising on quality. If you’re wondering how large your 5-minute HD video should be, give it a try here: Redpandacompress.com.