Easy Methods to Compress Videos for Sending Email

Email is one of the most important inventions of the past century, and yet, there are still many improvements that could be made to this great service. Perhaps most importantly, it would be great if we could attach larger videos to our emails because currently, the file limit on all email clients is quite limited. But until that day comes, we can at least compress videos for email so they are easier to send. But how exactly do you do that? Well, it all depends on the device you’re currently using. With that in mind, today we’re going to show you how to compress a video for email using several different methods, so choose the one that works best for your particular needs.

Part 1: The Best Method to Compress Videos for Email

The best way to compress videos for email is to use DVDFab Video Converter, a great piece of software that gives you multiple options to reduce the file size of your videos. Thanks to the fact that DVDFab Video Converter supports all the most popular formats, you can choose to simply convert your videos to a different format in order to save space. Depending on which format you want to convert to, this can save you a lot of space and will have very little impact on the video quality.

DVDFab Video Converter also doubles as a powerful video editor so you can also lower the video quality a bit or even trim parts of the video off in order to make it smaller. DVDFab Video Downloader is a very versatile tool so it’s ultimately up to you to decide how you want to use it to compress videos for email. Down below we’re going to give you an example of how to convert a video to a different format to save space but we’ll also mention where you can find the video quality settings and trimming tool. Just in case you want to use those instead, or in addition, to the file regular conversion.

1. Open DVDFab 11 and click on the Converter tab to get started. Load the video you want to compress by using one of the Add buttons, the big “+” in the middle or simply by using the good old drag & drop method.

2. The first thing you’ll want to adjust is the format. You can do this by accessing the Profile Switcher and then picking one of the options found under the Video tab. Certain formats are relatively similar so switching between them will not lower the file size by too much, however, in certain cases, the difference is quite noticeable. In the example below, we start off with a WMV file of 188 MB and were able to reduce its size to just 119 MB simply by converting it to MP4 without making any other changes.

3. If you want to further compress the video for email you can make a few other adjustments. For example, in the Advanced Settings menu you can go to Video Quality and pick Fast Speed for a much lower output size. Changing things like the resolution and frame rate will also impact the size in a big way. Finally, you could try trimming certain parts of the video you don’t need from the Video Edit menu in order to reduce the size even more. Lower all possible options to the bare minimum will also impact the video quality so make sure to strike a good balance between quality and size. The changes we made reduced the size of the video from 188 MB (before conversion) all the way down to 38 MB but try experimenting with the settings to see what works best for you.

4. Once you’ve made all the necessary changes use the bottom menu to pick a suitable destination folder for the compressed file and then click the Start button to begin the conversion.

Part 2: Compress Videos for Email on Windows by Creating a Zipped Folder

1. This method works best with WinRar so go ahead and download the free software if you don’t have it already.

2. Right-click the file or folder you want to compress and then select the option labeled “Add to Archive”.

3. Rename the archive if needed and change the format or the compression method (optional). There are many other settings you can do but they aren’t really necessary so don’t bother with them unless you know what you’re doing.

4. Click the OK button to compress the video for email and then right-click -> extract files if you ever want to unpack the archive again.

Part 3: Use iMovie to Edit and Compress Videos for Email on Mac

1. Open iMovie and click the Import Media button to add the video/s you want to compress.

2. Next, drag a box around the portion of the video you want to edit, which of course can include the whole thing. If you don’t want to trim or make any other edits to the video you can simply control-click on the video’s icon and pick the Compress button to skip the first part.

3. If you chose to also edit the video, you can go to File -> Share -> Email once you’re done and then select the Small option to compress the video for email.

4. Finally, click Share to open the compressed video in a new email screen where you can fill out the required fields and send it via email directly.

Part 4: Share Large Files without Compression Using Cloud Services

Compression can be very useful if you want to send large files via email but it’s not always necessary. Cloud services like Dropbox and Google Drive are a good alternative that allows you to send videos without modifying their quality or making any edits. These services are also very easy to use as all they require is that you upload files to your cloud and then share them with anyone you want. Simply upload a file and then generate a link that you can copy/paste to the people you want to share it with. The resulting link can be shared via email and the process works pretty much the same on both Dropbox and Google Drive.

Part 5: Use the Video Converter App to Compress Videos for Email on Android

1. Install the Video Converter Android app and then click Import to add the video you want to compress.

2. Tap the Convert button found near the bottom of the UI.

3. Select the Manual profile option and change the video settings to lower the size. This works similar to DVDFab Video Converter so once again, lowering the resolution and frame rate have the most impact. Experiment to see what works best for you.

4. Click OK once you’re done and send the new video using your preferred email service.

Part 6: Use the Video Slimmer App to Compress Videos for Email on iOS

1. Download and install the Video Slimmer app from iTunes

2. Tap the More option to select the new resolution and dimensions you want for the output file.

3. Click the “+” button and then load the video you want to compress.

4. Click Slim Now and then wait until the app finishes processing your file.

Conclusion

As you can see, it’s easy to compress a video file for email on every platform regardless of whether you’re on Windows, Mac, Android or iOS. We only gave one example for each platform but you can find plenty of other methods as well. However, if you’re on Windows or Mac we recommend just using DVDFab Video Converter. The software is fast, reliable, acts as both a video converter and a video editor, and has a lot of other useful features to boot. Moreover, there’s even a free trial that you can check out so you can first check out the software without paying a penny before deciding if you want to upgrade to the full version, which includes all the benefits listed above and many more.