Part 1 - How to Use Handbrake to Compress Video with Lossless Quality
As we have mentioned above, video compression codec is the key to reduce video esp. arge-sized 1080p/4K/8K UHD video without quality loss. Yet, which video codec is the best for you to compress 1080p HD or 4K/8K UHD videos while keeping the original quality? The answer is HEVC (H265). With higher coding efficiency (thanks to coding tree unit, enhanced Quantization and entropy coding), HEVC (x265) can achieve 50% higher compression ratio than H264 and 20% higher compression ratio than VP9 while keeping the same quality or even better quality than the input video. It's no exaggeration to say that HEVC is a lossless video codec for video compression.
Recommended Handbrake Video Compression Settings. Having a good understanding of Handbrake video settings will yield twice the compression result with half the effort. So prior to the step-by-step tutorial to reduce video file size with Handbrake, the following section will list the most recommended video compression settings for web and mobile.
Best Settings To Compress Video In Handbrake
- HandBrake is a free program that can be used to compress and prepare MP4 videos for upload to Vimeo. It can be downloaded for Windows or Mac here. If you have a question about using HandBrake, or are running into an error, please check out HandBrake's Support FAQ. Please use the following instructions when transcoding your video with HandBrake.
- Use Handbrake to Compress Large Video Files to Play on Your Tablet or Phone Matt Klein @howtogeek October 30, 2014, 12:34pm EDT Storage space on your phone or tablet comes at a premium, and you can't fill it up with a bunch of big video files.
- Compressing your video Click Open Source and choose a file to compress with Handbrake. Set the Format to MP4. Set the Dimensions (typically 1920x1080).
- Handbrake HandBrake is a free and open-source transcoder for digital video files and is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. It can convert video from nearly any format, e.g.wmv – Windows Media Video File,.avi – Audio Video Interleave File,.m4v,.mov, etc. Reducing video file sizes.
Pictures of five nights at freddys bonnie. Here we use Handbrake 1.1.0 to compress video to H265 and test if HEVC can live up to its promise to resize 4K video and 1080p HD video at 50%﹢compression ratio. The input video we use is an H264 encoded MP4 1080p video at 23.98FPS, 38 minutes in length and 1.22GB in file size. And the lossless video compression test is conducted on a Windows 7 computer with Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470 CPU and 8GB RAM. The specific operational process and result are below:
Step 1: Import MP4 (H264) Video.
Fire up Handbrake 1.1.0 after the download and installation are finished. Drop a file or folder to Handbrake or load MP4 1080p video via 'File' option .
Introduction to ms excel 2010. Step 2: Choose Output Format and Preset.
Select 'MP4' as output format and 'Apple 1080p30 Surround' as output preset.
Step 3: Opt for H265 as Video Codec.
Click 'Video' option and choose H265 (x265), H265 (10 bit) or H265 (12 bit) as video codec. BTW: to know the difference between H265 10 bit and H265 12 bit, you can check the explaination of color depth to know more.
Step 4: Compress H264 to H265 Now.
Tap 'Start Encode' button and this free video compressor will begin to compress MP4 (H264) to H265 (x265) video at Intel QSV hardware accelerated speed (enable it from 'Preferences').
Several mins later, the H264 to H265 (x265) compression, as well as H264 to H265 10 bit/12 bit compression is accomplished. The output file size and quality results are listed below:
Input Video: MP4 (H264), 1080p Full HD, 23.98FPS | |||||
Output Video | File Size | Video Quality | Frame Rate | Compression Ratio | Compression Time |
H265 (x265) | 565MB | Intact | 23.98FPS | 55% | 1 hr 42mins 5s |
H265 10 bit (x265) | 572MB | Intact | 23.98FPS | 54% | 2 hr 39mins |
H265 12 bit (x265) | 587MB | Intact | 23.98FPS | 53% | 2 hr 51mins 36s |
From the test data, it's clear to see that HEVC (H265) does an amazing job in video compression with 55% compression ratio to reduce H264 size from 1.22GB to 565MB while keeping the untouched quality. Of course, there is also a downside in HEVC. That is time consuming in HEVC video encoding using Handbrake (Intel QSV hardware decoding enabled), which might discourage lots of users from using Handbrake to compress H264 to H265.
If you do wanna compress H264 to H265 for smaller file size and better quality at the precondition of time saving, then you can consider to use the top Handbrake alternative - MacX Video Converter Pro. It's a professional HEVC video converter, built-in with Intel QSV/Nvidia/AMD hardware acceleration techs to help you not only hardware decode H264 video, but also hardware encode H264 to H265 (HEVC) at 5-8X faster speed than Handbrake. Thus, you can compress this H264 1080p video to HEVC (x265) with only 12 mins 42 seconds.
Note: the biggest difference among H265 (x265), H265 10 bit and H265 12 bit is the output image quality. To put it simply, H265 12 bit performs a little bit better than H265 10 bit and H265 8 bit in video quality without color banding or color dithering. Therefore, you're suggested to choose H265 12 bit or H265 10 bit if your video playback device supports such color depth in HEVC codec.
Handbrake Video Converter
HEVC Limitations: Currently HEVC (H265) is nowhere near as popular as H264 (MPEG-4 AVC). So if the video playback device or platform doesn't support HEVC codec, you're supposed to choose H264 codec for 1080p/4K/8K video compression. Check the hardware requirements on HEVC decoding & playback.