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rawrify-video-compressor

A standalone video compressor for Rawrify. I've split this out from the main Rawrify project as a subcomponent

Purpose

I built this to bypass video upload limits on certain social media platforms (e.g. Discord and 8 MB upload limits).

Simply run this program on video(s) you want to upload and it will attempt to compress them, sacrificing video and audio quality to reduce overall size.

There are limitations on how much a video can be compressed, but this works pretty well for most video files I've worked with.

Also includes functionality for converting videos from .mov to .mp4 format, because simply converting to .mp4 reduces size by a significant amount.

Quickstart Demo Video

• If you want to get started using this ASAP without any technical setup steps, check out this demo video which goes over the installation and basic usage.
• Great for people who aren't familiar with Python and/or technical projects, or people who just want to get started with minimal setup
• Only for Windows at this time. Planning on getting a Mac/nix build sometime later.

Easy Method (Windows Only... For Now)

• If you want the lowest effort installation process, read this section or watch the demo video
• Go to the Releases page for this project and find the most recent "rawrify-video-compressor-windows.zip" file
• Download it
• Extract it to whichever folder you want
• Voila! You are ready to go since it comes pre-packaged with all the Python and FFmpeg dependencies. Refer to the sections below (except Prerequisites) for how to use it
  • Please note you will NOT have to use the python keyword for running this-- you can just use ./compressor.exe --desired_size=<DESIRED_SIZE> and so on

Prerequisites

• Python 3.8+ recommended, but most 3.0+ versions should work
• Install the required Python packages in requirements.txt using pip install -r requirements.txt
• Install ffmpeg on your local machine
  • Linux - install from relevant package manager
  • Mac - homebrew recommended
  • Windows - chocolatey recommended

Command line arguments

• --desired_size - desired size of the video(s) in Kb; compression target
  
  
• --video_path - if compressing a video outside of the input folder, specify the path here
  
  
• --no-convert-mov - specify this to NOT convert .mov files to .mp4 before compression. By default, .mov files will be converted.
  
  

How To Use (Multiple Videos and/or Default Video Location)

• Place video files in the input directory within this project
• From the command line, execute python compressor.py --desired_size $SIZE
  • $SIZE is the desired size of each video file in the input folder (what to try to compress to) in Kb
• Wait for the conversion+compression functions to run
• Check the input folder for new *-compressed.mp4 files (the compressed videos)

How To Use (Individual Video and/or Non-Default Location)

• From the command line, execute python compressor.py --desired_size $SIZE --video_path $VIDEO_PATH
  • $SIZE is the desired size of each video file in the input folder (what to try to compress to)
    • This works in a kinda non-intuitive way. Basically it works off of the "magnitude" your video file is already at (e.g. if your video is 100 MB, declaring --desired_size 1 will attempt to compress to 1 MB. If your video is 100 KB, declaring --desired_size 1 will attempt to compress to 1 KB)
    • To cut down into a smaller magnitude (e.g. go from MB to KB), try supplying fractions (e.g. --desired_size 0.5)
    • READ the top troubleshooting point in the section below-- you can't compress TOO much or ffmpeg will chunder
  • $VIDEO_PATH is the path to the video file you want to convert and/or compress
• Wait for the conversion+compression functions to run
• Check the same folder the source video resides in for a new *-compressed.mp4 file-- this is your compressed video

Troubleshooting

• If you try to compress a video too much, you will get a "requested bitrate is too low" error from ffmpeg.
  • This can be resolved by increasing the --desired_size value. The ffmpeg CLI output will give you an "estimated minimum"-- you can generally go lower than this