By merely making a note of the pixels that stay the same, and recording only the pixels that change, video compression algorithms help fit the same video into a smaller amount of total data.
Compression uses clever math to compare each frame to the next one, looking for areas of the picture that don't change. Videos consist of frames, a series of still pictures played in quick succession to create the illusion of motion. Happily, you can, with a little help from HandBrake – a free app that helps you compress video without sacrificing (much of) its quality.īefore we get into how you can use HandBrake, we'll quickly review how it works its magic, and which options might best help you shrink down your videos to your satisfaction. Whether you're ripping your Blu-ray collection to an external hard drive, or just trying to e-mail Grandma a high-quality video of your vacation, sooner or later you'll wish you could fit all those pixels into a smaller file. In this age of HD and 4K, videos seem to keep getting bigger, but our hard drives and Internet bandwidth don't always follow suit.
