How to Compress a Video on Mac - 5 Free & Easy Ways

There must be many situations where you need to compress a video file on Mac.

You want to share a video with friends via email or social media, but its size exceeds the limit.
You need to playback some large UHD videos, but find it plays extremely laggy on Mac.
Large amounts of video files almost run out the Mac storage.
and so on.

But the real question is how to compress a video on Mac on earth? Most importantly, how to make video files smaller on Mac while retaining its original picture quality as much as possible. Don't worry, because this is just what this tutorial focuses on. We're going to show you some easy ways to compress video files on Mac.

Is It Possible to Compress Video on Mac without Losing Quality

Many video compressors for Mac claim they are able to compress a video without losing quality, but the truth is it's not possible to achieve.

It's the decrease of the bitrate, resolution, frame rate, or other image details that make a video smaller. Thus, the process of video compression always involves the compromise of certain details. But, that's not anything biggie as our real goal is compressing video files on Mac without visible quality loss, which is easy to do.

How to Compress a Video on Mac with Maximum Quality

VideoProc Converter is a fast, easy-to-use, and full-featured video compressor available on Mac and Windows. It lets you compress videos on Mac with a simple move of your mouse, requiring no previous knowledge. It holds the ability to manage multiple videos at the same time, namely you can compress hundreds of video files at once.

How to Compress a Video on Mac Using VideoProc Converter

Step 1. Import the Video

Go to the official site and free download VideoProc Converter on your macOS, and then install it. Launch it up, click the +Video or +Video Folder button to import a video or multiple videos. You can also directly drag the videos to this video compressor for Mac.

Step 2. Set the Compression Parameter

Short of time? You can hit on Target Format, select MP4 HEVC, and click on Run to active VideoProc Converter compress your video file on Mac. From our test, it is possible to compress the video size by over 90%. With the support of GPU acceleration, the whole process costs only minutes. Plus, VideoProc Converter can retain the original picture quality thanks to the application of the x265 high entropy codec algorithm.

Assume you want to take full control over the parameters of VideoProc Converter, click the Codec option in the top right corner of the page, and there you can get 6 methods to compress the video:

Compress a Video on Mac with Best Quality

Increase the value of GOP.
Move the quality slider to left.
Chang the video codec to HEVC.
Set up a lower resolution.
Decrease the frame rate.
Enter a lower Bit Rate value.

Bonus: You can also resize the file by cropping, trimming, splitting or cutting a video on Mac.

Step 3. Start the Compression of Video on Mac

After setting all those parameters, click the RUN button to start compressing a video on Mac.

How to Compress a Video on Mac with iMovie

If you've ever used this built-in editing software on Mac, you probably wondered at some times, "Is it possible to compress my video with iMovie?". Yes, Absolutely.iMovie is typically developed for making simple video edits, but it can also be utilized to compress videos on Mac.

iMovie compresses your video on Mac with the help of CPU only. iMovie might burst up the CPU usage rate to 80% or even higher. Thus means, during the long compression process, it's barely possible to launch up another program.

Step 1. Launch up iMovie on your Mac. Drag and drop the video files that you'd like to compress to iMovie. Alternatively, you come to its top menu bar, find out File, and click this. Hit Import Media to add source videos to iMovie.

Step 2. Once the video is successfully loaded to the video editing screen, you click on File and choose Share. You now obtain a few different ways to share videos, but what you should pick is Export File.

Step 3. The small new window displays the duration, file size, description, tags, format, resolution, quality information of the chosen video. To shrink a video size, you can:

Reduce the resolution: Hit the down-triangle button next to Resolution to select a lower resolution.
Select a lower quality: Tap the down-triangle button next to Quality, and pick up the proper one.
Set the Compress mode as Faster.

Note: Though a low resolution, quality grade, and fast compression speed refers to smaller video file size, these can bring visible quality loss. Thus, don't let the resolution go lower than 720P, or set Low as the quality grade.

Step 4. Hit on Next as soon as you have made up proper settings. On the new panel, you can change the export file name, and it's output folder if necessary. After that, click on Save.

How to Compress a Video on Mac with QuickTime Player

QuickTime Player, as its name implies, servers as a multiple media player to play videos in various formats on your Mac. However, it is also capable of compressing your videos. Unlike VideoProc Converter that allows you to compress a video by changing video formats, bitrate, and other properties, QuickTime doesn't leave you much room to adjust the output video size. This built-in program on Mac only allows you to shrink the video by exporting the original video at a lower resolution. How about the picture quality of the yield out video? Unfortunately, visible quality loss is hard to avoid.

The range of QuickTime supports formats is very limited. In most cases, it only enables you to compress videos that are in MPEG-2/4 or H.264 codec without a/v out-of-sync or black screen errors.

Step 1. Open up QuickTime on your Mac to enter the main interface. Hit File > Import to load the original video to this program.

Step 2. Hit File > Export As to obtain the 5 common resolution options, 4K, 1080P, 720P, 480P, and audio only. Suppose the original video files are in 4K, there you're advised to select 1080P or 720p.

Step 3. Suppose you choose the 4K or 1080P, we suggest you choose HEVC as the video file format by checking the HEVC option. If you select iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, and Apple TV…, you'll be led to the Save your movie panel. Pick up the devices that will be utilized for watching the video, and then click on Save.

Step 4. Enter the name for the compressed video file, assign the destination file folder for holding the final video, and hit Save to let QuickTime Player starts to compress the video on Mac.

How to Compress a Video on Mac with VLC

VLC media player is another media player listed in this post that can compress a video on Mac. It supports most video formats, including some old ones such as WMV, YUV, and 3GPP2. It offers more options to control the file properties than QuickTime Player does. For example, you can customize the codecs, bitrate, and audio channel.

However, we don't recommend you to play around with these options if you know little about video encoding. Taking a click on a button without knowing its function might lead to A/V out-of-sync, compression failure, and a few other issues.

Step 1. Open VLC media player on Mac. Hit the File button located on the top menu bar and hit Convert/Stream.

Step 2. Hit Open media and choose the source video that you want to compress its size on Mac.

Step 3. Go to the Choose Profile section and select Video – H.264 + AAC.

Step 4. Navigate to the Choose Destination section and select the target output file folder.

Step 5. Hit Save. VLC starts to compress your video on Mac.

How to Compress a Video on Mac with Freeconvert

If you don't want to install any extra video compressor for Mac and you feel the existing iMovie and Quicktime Player are too limited in the functions of making a video file size smaller, then take a look at the online video compressors for Mac. And among a wide variety of browser-based video compressors for Mac, Freeconvert is the best to go. With it, you can compress up to 1GB of video files on Safari or other browsers.

Step 1. Open up this free online video compressor for Mac on Safari, Chroma, or any other prevalent browser.

Step 2. Hit Choose Files and select the video that you want to make its size smaller on Mac.

Step 3. Choose MP4 as the target format. Click on the gear button.

Step 4. Scroll down to find the Select Target Size menu, and move the slider to set a target file size as a percentage of the original video. Hit Apply Settings.

Step 5. Press Compress Now. This free online video compressor for Mac starts to compress video files on Mac.

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