How to Compress Videos for YouTube with Best Quality

But how can you compress large videos for uploading to YouTube? What if you upload an oversized video for YouTube? What are the eligible video specs for YouTube uploading? This article will remove all your confusions.

Whenever creators are shooting video content, they tend to shoot it in the best possible mode avaiable, up to 4K at 60 FPS, on their camcorders, GoPro, drones, or mobiles etc. This causes the taken videos to be huge in size, which may exceed the massive size of YouTube video limitations or take hours long for uploading. Meanwhile, some parameters of your shootings like codec, frame rate, or resolution may contradict what YouTube requires. All these will lead to YouTube uploading failure unless you compress videos for YouTube in advance.

Free download WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe to compress 4K, HD or any videos to YouTube supported formats and dimensions according to the extent you demand. Within 3 steps – Load video, choose format and tap RUN button, you can make your video compatible with YouTube and upload it smoothly.

Part 1. How to Compress Videos for YouTube – Try Out the Best 5 YouTube Video Compressors

#1. WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe

A YouTube video compressor is a necessity to compress videos for YouTube uploading. But what video compression software to choose over the market? Online video compressor may be a choice. But it seems less capable for large 4K videos owing to the file size and network bandwidth limit. However, if you get WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe at hand, you can easily convert and compress videos for YouTube regardless of video file size or whatever.

• Compress and convert any video of any resolutions (4K/8K/HD) to YouTube supported formats and codecs.
• Lossless compression: cut off unwanted clips and crop black bars to acutely reduce video file size without affecting quality;
• Lower 4K to 1080p/720p, frame rate 60FPS to 30FPS, bit rate to further compress video for YouTube, roughly 50-70% size off!
• Utilize de-interlacing engine and high quality engine to ensure the highest possible quality output for YouTube.

Now, let’s start with compressing video or vlog for YouTube. Download and install the video compressor for YouTube on your computer.

Step 1. Load the video(s) you want to compress for YouTube.
You can easily input the video(s) by clicking the “+Video” button, or dragging & dropping the target video(s) to the main interface of WinX compressor.

compress video for YouTube

Step 2. Select the output profile.
From the auto pop-up Output Profile panel, go to “Web Video Profile -> YouTube Video” and select out your desired output format. You are recommended to choose the first one MP4 with H.264/AAC codecs as the result. Then press Ok button.

Notes: As YouTube adds support for HEVC (H.265), you can also go to “General Profiles -> HEVC Video” to select HEVC as output format, which is more effective in compressing video file size.

Step 3. Reduce file size by trimming/cropping or tweaking parameters.
Clicking “Edit” button will enable you to crop off unwanted parts, remove unnecessary clips by trimming, add external subtitles or disable subtitles, etc.

If you want to tweak the video audio parameters settings, for example, bit rate, frame rate, video resolution and aspect ratio, simply click the gear icon. You can refer to the recommended YouTube upload encoding settings to adjust parameters for smallest size yet best quality.

Reduce video size for YouTube

BTW, with all the options applied, namely converting video format/codec, trimming/cropping and adjust video parameters, you’re able to compress/reduce 4K video size from 1GB to 100MB without losing quality visually.

Step 4. Specify output folder and begin compressing video for YouTube.
You can click “Browse” to select any folder as you like to store the output. When all settings are finished, just tap “RUN” to get access to the video compression process. In the same way, you can compress video for Whatsapp, Instagram, etc.

After that, you can upload the compressed video to YouTube as instructions.

Video Tutorial: How to Compress Videos for YouTube with WinX HD Video Converter Deluxe

#2. HandBrake

HandBrake is also capable of compressing videos for YouTube by converting the video format, changing video or audio parameters. You’re able to convert your videos of any formats to MP4, WebM or MKV in HEVC, H.264, VP8, VP9, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, Theora etc. Also, by tweaking the video resolution, frame rate, bit rate, quality or simply trimming and cropping, you’re able to reduce the video file size for uploading to YouTube as well. Let’s check how to compress video for YouTube uploading on HandBrake.

Step 1: Download and install HandBrake on your computer if you haven’t got it. Now open it and drag and drop to import your video into it.

Step 2: Choose a preset profile according to your needs, such as Web > Vimeo YouTube HQ 1080p60 .

Step 3: In the Summary section, select a container for your video. MP4, MKV and WebM are available.

Reduce video size for YouTube with HandBrake

Step 4: If needed, you can also tweak the video resolution, quality, frame rate, bit rate or crop the video from the columns next to the Summary. Or drop down the list of Range next to the Titile option to select Seconds and type in the start and end time for trimming video.

Step 5: Click Browse button to specify an output folder for the converted video.

Step 6: When you’re done, click Start Encode button to activate the conversion right now.

Also read: How to Compress Video Size with VLC Media Player.

#3. Any Video Converter

Any Video Converter is a video converter designed with no limitations and zero costs. It lets you effortlessly convert any video files to any format for FREE, including MKV to MP4, AVI to FLV, TS to WMV, H.264 to HEVC, video to YouTube, Android, Xbox One, Apple TV etc. Besides that, you’re able to shrink the video size with it by lowering the video parameters, or trimming and cropping. To convert and compress videos for YouTube with Any Video Converter, you can follow the steps below:

Step 1: Free Download AVC on your computer. And click the “Add Video(s)” or “Add or Drag File(s)” button to add video file(s) you would like to convert.

Step 2: Select preset YouTube profiles as the output video format from the “Output Profile” drop-down list. Under the preview window field, you can also manually set the output video parameters. For novice users, it is recommended to leave the default settings.

Shrink video for YouTube with AVC

Step 3: If you’d like to trim video, click on the clip icon next to the video file, then in the pop-up window, you can set the start and stop time of the clip. To clip more than one segment, please click on the “New Segment” button, and repeat previous steps to trim another and more segments.

Step 4: Click on the “Convert Now” to start the comnversion.

Also check: How to Reduce Video File Size for YouTube in Adobe Premiere Pro.

#4. VEED.IO

VEED.IO is a free video compressor based on the web. It works with both Windows and Mac, and within your browser, so there’s nothing to download. With it, you can compress MP4, MOV, MKV, AVI, WMV, FLV video file formats. If you use Dropbox to host your videos, you can connect your account and directly upload your videos to the tool and then compress them for the YouTube. What remarkable about this online video compressor is that it has a user friendly slider for adjusting the compression rate between higher quality and smaller file size.

Step 1: Navigate to the VEED.IO video compressor official site. Click “Upload Video” button to import the target video that to be converted for YouTube.

Step 2: You can see an estimated compressed size of the output video. And then decide to change video resolution as you need.

Compress video online for YouTube

Step 3: If you want to trim the video, you can also click on the “Trim Video” button to make it done.

Step 4: After you’ve done, tap the “Compress Video” button to reduce the video size right now.

#5. VideoSmaller

Likewise, VideoSmaller is a web-based video compressor to reduce video file size for free. It supports a variety of different video file formats including MP4, AVI, MPEG, MOV formats, and allows you to upload video files of up to 500 MB. Thus, it basically meets your needs to convert video footage to YouTube supported formats for uploading. You have two options to compress video ineed: use low compression level or scale video width. You can choose the one that fits you best.

Step 1: Go to VideoSmaller webpage. Click “Browse” button to choose a video from your computer.

Compress video for YouTube using VideoSmaller

Step 2: Tick on the box of “Use low compression level”. This will slightly reduce the video file size but keep the best video quality. Or you can choose your desired video width from the drop-down list.

Step 3: Click the button “Upload Video”. It may take some time depending on the video length.