Resize Video

Presets set the short side of the picture, so they work the same for horizontal and vertical video. A 1920×1080 clip at 720p becomes 1280×720; a 1080×1920 phone clip at 720p becomes 720×1280.

Sizes per minute include 128 kbps sound. We checked the 720p line with a 60 second 1080p test clip: the result was 15.5 MB. The bitrate is lower when the original was already efficient, because the tool never spends more than the source used for the same number of pixels.

With Keep aspect ratio ticked you type only the width and the height follows. Untick it to set both, for example 1080×1920 for a vertical slot or 1280×720 for a player that only accepts 16:9. When the new shape differs from the video's own shape, choose how to fit it:

• Black bars: the whole picture is visible, the remaining area is black.
• Fill and crop: the picture fills the frame and the edges that don't fit are cut.
• Stretch: the picture is squeezed to fit, which distorts faces and circles. Only useful for fixing a video that was saved with the wrong shape.

To choose exactly which part is cut, use Crop Video instead.

• Sending in a chat app or by email: 480p or 720p. A phone screen shows 720p sharply, and a one minute clip drops to roughly 7 to 16 MB.
• A background or product video on a website: 720p is usually enough, since it is often shown smaller than full screen and loads quicker on mobile data.
• Keeping a 4K original in a smaller size: 1080p. It still looks sharp on most TVs and laptops with a quarter of the pixels of 4K.
• A form that asks for exact pixels: Custom, with Keep aspect ratio unticked and Black bars, so nothing is cut or stretched.

Even numbers. H.264 video needs even widths and heights, so a typed width of 1001 becomes 1002 and a calculated height is rounded the same way. The line under the settings shows the final size before you start.

Rotated phone videos. Phones often store video lying on its side with a flag saying how to turn it. The sizes on this page are the video as you see it, and the result is saved upright, so a portrait clip stays portrait.

Frame rate and sound. Resizing keeps the original frame rate and keeps the sound, copying AAC as it is and converting other sound formats to AAC at 128 kbps.

Resizing decodes and re-encodes every frame. On our test server, which has no graphics card, a 60 second 1920×1080 clip went to 720p in 33 seconds using the browser's built-in encoder and 184 seconds using the FFmpeg fallback. The browser engine runs whenever your browser can decode the clip and encode the output; on a laptop it usually uses the graphics chip and is faster than on our server. FFmpeg is used for formats the browser can't handle and is downloaded once (about 10 MB).

Both make files smaller, in different ways. Resizing lowers the number of pixels, which is right when the picture is bigger than where it will be shown: a 4K clip for a phone screen or a 1080p clip for a small website player. Compress Video aims at a file size and picks the resolution and bitrate for you, which is right when a chat app or email sets a limit in MB. If the goal is a specific number of megabytes, compress; if the goal is a specific number of pixels, resize.

Making a video larger than its original only meets a requirement. Upscaling 480p to 1080p gives a bigger file with the same blur, and the page tells you when your setting does that.