How to compress videos for your online courses? – Teachmore

If you are planning to host video courses and are worried about the size of your videos, you can follow our step-by-step guide to reduce sizes of your videos. If your primary goal is to stream videos on mobile devices and laptops, you can safely compress your videos to 720p without compromising on quality.

Convert a 2.47 GB (1080p) video to a 176 MB (720p) video.

Why 720p?

Quality

If you play the video at 720p and watch it on a laptop’s full-screen mode, the video quality is pretty good and everything written on the whiteboard is still clearly visible.

What do you need?

Handbrake : https://handbrake.fr/
Preset File: https://goo.gl/vvEaAh
Original HD 1080 video file/s

Step 1: Install Handbrake

Goto https://handbrake.fr/ and click on the “Download” button. Run the installer and wait for the installation to complete. Proceed to step 2 once Handbrake is installed.

Step 2: Place all your 1080p MOV files in a single folder

Create a new folder “Input - 1080p”. This will be our input folder. Place all the 1080p videos that need to be compressed in this folder.

Step 3: Start Handbrake and select the source folder

Choose the “Folder (Batch Scan)” option and select the folder in which you placed your original 1080p videos.

Step 4: Import Preset optimised for 720p compression

We tried several configurations in Handbrake and figured out a configuration that gives us the best result. We have exported the final configuration in a ready to use preset file. Download the preset file on your computer from here. Then click on “Presets -> Import from file” option from the top menu. Choose the downloaded preset file and proceed to step 5.

Step 5: Choose the imported preset for current compressions

Click on the Presets dropdown and select the imported preset under “Custom Presets”. Once the preset is selected, all the settings required to compress the video and produce optimized version of 720p video will be automatically selected.

Step 6: Create a folder for saving the compressed files

Create a new folder “Output - 720p”. This will be our output folder. Handbrake will save the compressed videos in this folder.

Step 6: Set preference for Output Files

Click on “Tools -> Preferences -> Output Files”.

“Automatically name output files” should be checked.
Select “Always use MP4” from “MP4 File Extension” dropdown.
Click on “Browse” to set the default path to the newly created output folder “Output - 720p”.

Step 7: Choose output location for the first video

Make sure the first video is selected in the “Title” drop-down. Click on “Browse” at the bottom of the screen, choose the “Output - 720” folder and enter the filename for the first output video - “Video-1.mp4”. You only need to do this for the first file, other files will automatically get their names assigned.

Step 8: Add all videos to the queue

Click on the small down arrow located next to “Add to Queue” and select “Add All”. This will add all the videos to the queue and they are now ready to be processed.

Step 9: Start Encoding

Click on “Queue” button to check if all the videos have been added to the queue for compression. Click on “Start Queue”. Now sit back and relax. The time it takes to complete the processing depends on your video size and your computer configuration.

Step 10: Check the compressed videos

Conclusion

Above steps can help you compress videos to reduce the sizes of your videos, saving you a lot of storage space and bandwidth usage. Our original test video was a 2.47 GB mov file. It is now reduced to a 176 MB mp4 file. Using our custom preset we are able to very closely replicate YouTube’s compression for 720p. Below is a property comparison between a video compressed with our preset and the video compressed by YouTube.

Once you are done compressing your videos and are ready to start selling your courses online, head over to teachmore.com!