Compress a video, in your browser

CutNoodle's video compressor makes a video file smaller by re-encoding it, entirely inside your browser tab. You pick a quality preset, a resolution or an exact target size in megabytes, and get back an MP4 with H.264 video and AAC audio. The file never leaves your device: no server is involved.

How it works

A video is large because of its bitrate: how many bits per second the encoder spent describing the picture. Compressing means spending fewer and rewriting every frame at that budget, which cannot be done without decoding the video first. So a compressor has to be a real encoder, not a repackaging trick.

CutNoodle does that work on your machine. When your browser can decode the source and encode H.264 itself, the job runs through its built-in encoders; when it cannot, CutNoodle falls back to ffmpeg compiled to WebAssembly and says so. Either way the file is read from disk in pieces, so a long recording is never held in memory all at once. It opens MP4, MOV, M4V, WebM, MKV and AVI, up to 2 GB.

The three settings

• Quality. High, Balanced or Small file. Each sets how many bits are spent per pixel, so the bitrate follows from your video's resolution and frame rate. Balanced is the default and is right most of the time. Use High for detailed or fast-moving footage, and Small file when getting under a limit matters more than the picture.
• Resolution. Original, 1080p, 720p or 480p. The number is the short side of the frame, not the height, so a vertical phone video is handled like a landscape one. Only sizes at or below your source are offered: upscaling adds weight and nothing to look at. Dropping it is the most effective way to shrink a file.
• Target size. Optional, in megabytes. Use it when the number is the whole point: an upload limit, an attachment, a form that refuses anything larger. CutNoodle divides that size by the duration, takes out the audio and a margin for the container, and spends the rest on video. While it is filled in, the quality preset is ignored. If the size is too small for the resolution you chose, CutNoodle says so, but still runs.

The frame rate is always left as it was, and the result is never heavier than the file you started with. The estimated size sits under the settings and updates as you change them.

What compression actually costs

No compressor makes a file smaller for free. Every one of them, this one included, throws away detail you are least likely to notice. But losing detail and seeing the loss are different things: at a sensible bitrate the missing detail sits below what the eye picks up at normal viewing size. Push the budget far enough down and it stops being subtle, as flat areas go blocky and fast motion breaks up.

This is also why some videos barely shrink. Footage straight out of a camera, a phone or a screen recorder was encoded quickly and generously, so there is slack to take out. A clip downloaded from a social platform has already been squeezed by that platform's encoder, so compressing it again costs quality rather than megabytes. CutNoodle will not hand you a file that is not smaller.

What it does not do

• It uploads nothing, so there is nothing to delete afterwards.
• It compresses one video at a time: no batch mode, no queue.
• It writes MP4 with H.264 and AAC only. No HEVC, AV1, VP9 or WebM output.
• It does not cut, trim or edit. To take the dead air out of a recording, use the silence remover first and compress the result.
• It does not open files above 2 GB.
• It cannot keep HDR: a high dynamic range source becomes standard range, and CutNoodle warns you first.
• On a phone a large file can exhaust the memory the browser gives the page. Choose a lower resolution, or use a computer.

Common questions