Video too big to send: three fixes
Updated October 29, 2026
A minute of phone video is 100 to 300 MB. Email refuses it, chat apps re-compress it badly, and the person on mobile data pays for every megabyte. Three tools on this site handle it, in your browser, with the browser's own encoders.
Pick the one that matches what the other person needs: the whole clip, one moment, or just the sound.
Compress the whole clip
The compress video tool re-encodes to MP4 at the height you choose. 720p at "medium" is the sweet spot for phones and laptops: ten times smaller than 4K, still sharp on a screen. Drop to 480p and "low" for a quick preview or a voice memo with a face.
Remove the audio if it is just noise; it saves another 10 to 15 percent. If the result would be bigger than the original, the tool gives the original back and says so.
Turn a moment into a GIF
For a reaction, a demo step or a bug report, a 3 to 5 second GIF says it all and plays inline everywhere. Set the start time and the length, 480 px wide, 10 frames per second. Keep it short: GIF has no real compression, so every second is roughly 500 KB at that size.
Keep only the audio
A recorded talk, an interview, a song from a concert: the audio is 5 percent of the file. Extract it with "Original" to copy the track without loss (an M4A or OGG), or as WAV if you are going to edit it. Nothing is re-encoded unless you ask.
Tips
- Encoding runs on your processor: a 5-minute clip takes a minute or two on a laptop.
- Chrome and Safari encode AAC audio; Firefox keeps Opus, which every modern player reads.
- For a long video, a cloud link is still the right answer; compress for the moment, not the archive.
Questions
- Why MP4 and not WebM?
- MP4 with H.264 plays on every phone, TV and messaging app. WebM is better on the web but fails on older iPhones.
- Does it work on a phone?
- Yes, in a current Chrome or Safari; it is slower than on a laptop.
- Is the video uploaded?
- No. Mediabunny reads the file in pieces and WebCodecs encodes on the device.