As much as Apple keeps hyping them up, those 4K 60fps videos will chew through your iPhone’s storage space like you wouldn’t believe. When you get to the point where you have to choose between keeping videos of your kids and clips from that beloved once-in-a-lifetime vacation, you have a problem. But I’ve got a solution—not all videos need to be stored at full quality, at all times.
There are many ways to go about compressing your iPhone videos, but like most things in life, the simplest option is often the best. Kompresso is a free to use, native iPhone app that uses the powerful processor on your smartphone to compress files. This means there’s no need to upload or share your video files to online compression websites.
Another plus? Most of the compression apps you’ll see on the App Store are filled with popup ads, and are quite nickel-and-dimey. Kompresso is differen, while still being plenty robust. You can compress a video by 30% without even changing the resolution. And a drop in resolution can lead to 70% or higher file size savings.
Why you might need to compress videos
Most people think of video compression as the last tool in their belt, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There are many reasons why you might want to compress videos, even if all you’re thinking of is backup.
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The storage space issue: The biggest factor here comes down to storage space. Perhaps your iPhone is running out of storage space, and you’ve realized that there are 30 GBs of videos on it that you don’t even remember taking.
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Data usage and upload issue: When it comes to uploading or sharing videos, file size really hurts. It takes longer to upload large files, and there are sites that won’t even allow for videos above a certain size. Not to mention the bandwidth required, and the data charges when you try to upload a 5GB video straight from your iPhone, using 5G.
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The speed issue: The bigger the data size, the longer the transfer, and it doesn’t matter if it’s happening offline, when you’re offloading a video from the iPhone to your computer, or if you’re transferring the file using an online service.
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The playback issue: A large iPhone video plays great on your iPhone, and your Mac, but that might not be the case when you transfer it to your parents’ Windows PC and they try to play it on their TV (true story, this happened to one of my wedding videos, which lagged and stuttered like crazy).
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The Cloud issue: Apple is already bad at giving us affordable storage space. And if you’re on one of the cheaper tiers of its cloud plan, like 50GB or 200GB, a couple of videos can push you to upgrade to the 2TB plan that costs $9.99/month. Do you really want to give Apple $120 per year just to store some large video files?
What does compressing your videos do?
Good video compression is all about striking a balance between file size and visual quality. Compression algorithms try to reduce the file size while still keeping all the visual elements of the video intact, or at least at an acceptable quality.
The software analyzes the video frame by frame, and then looks for redundancies and patterns across the video. This can be between a single frame, or between multiple consecutive frames.
In a single frame, the algorithm might compress adjacent pixels with similar color and brightness. For example, it might store color details for a large part of a sky shot in one spot, instead of having data on every single blue pixel.
When it comes to multiple frames, the algorithm might also save on details from a static background.
Of course, once video is compressed, you might notice that the video quality is slightly reduced. You might see visible pixelation, or blockiness in some videos with fast motion. Although, with good programs, this isn’t that common. If this does happen, you can try compressing again, just using less harsh parameters, or perhaps without dropping down the resolution.
How to compress vidoes on iPhone using Kompresso
The Kompresso app offers two options for compressing videos. By default, you’ll see a simplified three tier option. Add any video and choose between High, Medium, and Low quality. As you change the option, you’ll see the file size savings you’ll get up top.
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
Keeping the highest quality will keep the same resolution but will reduce the bitrate and will use the compression tricks I talked about above. This will make the video take up around 30% less space. The Medium quality option will reduce the resolution to 720p, and the Low Quality option will take it all the way down to 480p. Personally, I wouldn’t suggest going down that far.
In fact, if you find you need to select the “Low” preset to make a dent in your storage space, it might be better to switch to the Advanced Options tab to customize your size savings manually.
Credit: Khamosh Pathak
Here, you can fine tune the Compression settings to focus on one of three presets: Less Space, Balanced, and Better Quality. Next, make sure to choose H.265 encoding, as it’s highly efficient. Then, you can choose the resolution, frame rate, and even the format to export.
Finally, tap the Compress button and wait a while as the video is compressed. Now, you can directly share the video, to save it to the Photos app. Once the new video is saved, make sure you go to the Photos app to delete the old video, and then again, to clear it from the Recently Deleted folder.
Kompresso is free to use for up to three compressions a day, and you can unlock all limits by paying $1.99/month or $9.99 to fully unlock it for life.