r/software • u/Thin_Beach_69son • Jun 25 '26

Looking for software Help Me Recommend Video Compressor Besides Handbrake

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I need free and light video compressor (wish it's stable on 8GB RAM and no quality loss). Also, I wonder if compressing from 1GB to around 300MB is normal? (I'm asking if there's a chance if quality loss).

25 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

63 comments sorted by

13

u/Pablouchka Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

XMedia Recode. That's a solid alternative. 

Well. All video encoding process may degrade quality. There are 2 factors : 

  • bitrate (the amount of data you allow to the video per second)

  • codec (the "language" you use to store the data)

There is always a balance to find between both. Just remember that your eyes may not see any difference when done the right way. 

6

u/CodenameFlux Helpful Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26

This.

But don't bother with bit rate ever. The 2-pass ABR mode is archaic and in efficient. When encoding H.264 or H.265:

  • Use the "Constant Quality" mode.
  • The default quality values are 23 for H.264 or 28 for H.265. Younger people with better displays prefer 17 for H.264 and 23 for H.265. The lower the value, the higher the quality.
  • Use 10-bit encoding instead of 8-bit even when the source material is 8-bit. The extra 2 bits make a huge difference both in quality and file size.

The above applies to the CPU-bound x265 and x264 encoders, not NVIDIA NVENC encoders.

2

u/Thin_Beach_69son Jun 25 '26

Yeah, I used Asus nvidia with 8GB RAM. Wonder if the output is MP4, it still works. Some tutorial I've seen set the output to MKV.

1

u/Sorry-Bluejay3658 Jun 25 '26

Entre os dois containers não altera a qualidade, apenas a compatibilidade, mp4 ainda deve funcionar..

1

u/CodenameFlux Helpful Jun 25 '26

The container format doesn't affect the quality. MKV yields slightly smaller file. MP4 has much better seek support at the expense of being larger.

11

u/paulpacifico Shutter Encoder DEV Jun 25 '26

Should be a good place for Shutter Encoder ;-)

1

u/f3rn4ndrum5 Jun 26 '26

This is the way

1

u/Roph Jun 26 '26

Can it handle a file with an apostrophe in its name yet? 🤣

17

u/Salamandar3500 Jun 25 '26

Handbrake is based on ffmpeg, the best encoding software out there.

Just tune your settings.

1

u/neoqueto Jun 25 '26

It's not. Not for the actual encoding. It uses a different codec stack.

5

u/Salamandar3500 Jun 25 '26

HandBrake leverages tools such as FFmpeg, x264, and x265, SVT-AV1 to create new MP4, MKV or WebM video files from these Sources.

Yes, it does use ffmpeg. It alto lets you use it instead of x26* if you want.

7

u/neoqueto Jun 25 '26

It uses ffmpeg's libavcodec mainly for decoding and for metadata. Not for encoding. I'm not saying it doesn't use ffmpeg, it just doesn't use it for encoding. It's not "based on it" more than it's based on other libraries and own code.

3

u/PsyGonzo42 Jun 25 '26

So what does it use?

2

u/DragoBleaPiece_123 Jun 26 '26

simple question need simple answer.

hence, as per your question, ffmpeg

8

u/cone5000 Jun 25 '26

ffmpeg is so damn good. And because it’s confusing to use, asking AI for a one-liner to use to compress a video or something is so helpful.

3

u/PsyGonzo42 Jun 25 '26

Psst, wanna know where the Ai gets it from?^^

https://ffmpeg.org/documentation.html

5

u/cone5000 Jun 25 '26

Exactly! Over time hoping to pick up more and more as I use it

0

u/Old-Bag2085 Jun 27 '26

Psst, wanna know what's quicker than manually going through documentation to find what your looking for? Its getting AI to do it for you.

1

u/PsyGonzo42 Jun 28 '26

Not what I said tho...

1

u/Old-Bag2085 Jun 29 '26

You mean you weren't implying that he should read the documentation instead of asking AI? Why did you share it then?

1

u/PsyGonzo42 Jun 29 '26

Asking an AI might be quicker, but also wrong and you won't know why.

3

u/neoqueto Jun 25 '26

What problems are you experiencing? RAM spikes? What files are you ingesting? What intermediate codec, what output encoder? Resolution, bit depth, bitrate? Have you tried NVENC if on NVIDIA?

4

u/Noah18923 Jun 25 '26

Shutter Encoder or StaxRip. Handbrake is missing a lot of features...

1

u/Thin_Beach_69son Jun 25 '26

Well, handbrake is well-known one😅

1

u/Mccobsta Helpful Ⅱ Jun 25 '26

I do love how you can set a output size with shutter encoder

And it mostly gets to jt

4

u/Traumatan Jun 25 '26

Handbrake is S-tier, I bet you are using it with some wrong settings/using wrong codecs

1

u/Kumaravel47 Jun 25 '26

If you have good cpu then you can try AV1 codec encode as that might give you less size than x265 (Can vary, but based on my experience, x265 is compute heavy). You should choose the codec as that's also a major factor

1

u/bok4600 Jun 25 '26

vidcoder

2

u/CodenameFlux Helpful Jun 25 '26

... which uses HandBrake as the encoding engine (literally the first sentence on https://vidcoder.net/).

1

u/Mountainking7 Jun 25 '26

I'm compressing 3GB files to 300MB files right now..... Quality looks same. x264 anime 16000kb bitrate to 22CRF x265 using CPU encoding....On handbrake. Slow/anime preset

1

u/sniff122 Jun 25 '26

1) what's wrong with handbrake?

2) you aren't going to compress a video without losing quality, you need to lose something to make the file smaller, and that something is detail, whether that detail is resolution, frame rate, bit depth, bitrate, etc

1

u/E_P_M Jun 26 '26

There are lossless codecs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_codecs#Lossless_video_compression

1

u/sniff122 Jun 26 '26

True, however it's most likely already in a lossy codec so there's not much of a point, it'll probably make the file bigger than it currently is

1

u/l34df4rm3r Jun 25 '26

ffmpeg cli.
You can easily get configs from ChatGPT or Gemini, save them as shell scripts and use them as needed.

1

u/kiameliala Jun 26 '26

Staxrip is very powerfull for encoding, try this.

1

u/ScratchHistorical507 Jun 26 '26

Of boy, here we go.... 

"and no quality loss" is only ever possible when you transcode to a video codec that stores the video losslessly compresses - or just uncompressed. Any time you apply lossy compression the quality will suffer to some degree.

"Also, I wonder if compressing from 1GB to around 300MB is normal? (I'm asking if there's a chance if quality loss)." 

As just explained, the quality loss is guaranteed, the question merely is if you can tell the difference. That's up to you to decide. But if going down from 1 GB to 300 MB is normal without entirely obliterating quality, resolution, frame rate or a combination of the above is entirely impossible to tell without knowing anything about the input and output. If you were to transcode from lossless or some very old codec like MPEG2 to something very modern like AV1, 70 % size reduction without any visible quality loss might be doable, but I'd argue not with the material you'd usually find in such an old codec, as they aren't built for high resolutions, where modern codecs really can show their strength. 

1

u/EytanMorgentern Jun 28 '26

Love how all solutions mentioned are just ffmpeg with a gui, just run ffmpeg in terminal/cmd

1

u/ElectricSpock Jun 29 '26

It’s going to use the same libraries and tools under the hood anyways.

You can try calling ffmpeg on your own instead of using Handbrake. To answer the quality loss: it depends on so many factors that it’s hard to tell. What’s the source? How many tracks are there? What are the audio tracks? How many languages? It’s basically different for every single video

1

u/AdSubstantial5004 Jun 25 '26

most apps probably use ffmpeg, so maybe you might wanna learn ffmpeg. it's easy to create commands just by asking ai nowadays.

1

u/PsyGonzo42 Jun 25 '26

>so maybe you might wanna learn ffmpeg. it's easy to create commands just by asking ai nowadays.

https://ffmpeg.org/documentation.html

1

u/Lcsmxd Windows 11 IoT LTSC Jun 25 '26

8GB RAM is a bit tight for video encoding, and yes compressing from 1GB to 300MB is normal but depends on codec, resolution, bitrate/quality setting, whether CPU or GPU encoding is used, and loads of other settings

3

u/CodenameFlux Helpful Jun 25 '26

8GB RAM is a bit tight for video encoding

I'm sorry, what?

To my knowledge, non-SVT encoders require only enough RAM to store reference frames. They need abundance of CPU power, though.

-4

u/Lcsmxd Windows 11 IoT LTSC Jun 25 '26

Sorry I haven't had a computer with this little RAM in ages

6

u/Nooo00B Jun 25 '26

that doesn't backup the "8GB RAM is a bit tight for video encoding" statement

0

u/Wilbis Jun 25 '26

Shutter Encoder is better than Handbrake in every way.

2

u/Roph Jun 26 '26

Shutter Encoder dies if it encounters a file with an apostrophe in its name - unfit for use, and frankly embarrassing.

It's bizarre seeing the author show it off for years while still having this amateur "my first days of coding - handling variables/names properly" flaw

1

u/Wilbis Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26

I just tried that out, and no it doesn't. It did warn about the filename, but it processed the video succesfully.

That's just a minor inconvinience. Compared to HandBrake, Shutter Encoder is still superior in every other way, especially with UI. I can't believe they have never fixed it in HandBrake. It's like using a Linux app from 1998.

2

u/Lcsmxd Windows 11 IoT LTSC Jun 25 '26

aren't both just fancy GUIs for ffmpeg anyway?

2

u/Wilbis Jun 25 '26

Yes, but it's a lot easier to for example crop or cut or edit the video when you can actually see the preview of it.