Compress, convert, cut and resize videos without uploading them
Most video jobs are small but urgent: a clip too big to email, an iPhone MOV that a Windows laptop will not play, a landscape recording that needs to become a vertical Reel, a long lecture where you only need ten minutes. These free video tools do those jobs in your browser. The video compressor shrinks a file to a size you choose, the video converter and pages such as MOV to MP4 change the format, and trim video, video cutter and merge videos handle the editing.
For social media there are resizers for Reels, YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram, plus a vertical video maker that fills the empty space with a blurred copy of the video. Subtitle tools convert SRT to VTT, add subtitles as a selectable track or burn them in. You can also pull out the soundtrack with video to MP3, grab frames with the frame extractor, turn a clip into a GIF with video to GIF, and blur faces or number plates before sharing.
The tools use WebCodecs, the video encoder and decoder built into modern browsers, so processing runs on your own device and often uses its graphics hardware. Your videos are never uploaded. Where a format allows it, a tool copies the video stream instead of re-encoding it, which is lossless and takes seconds. A few old formats such as AVI with Xvid need a larger converter that downloads only when you ask for it.
Which tool do you need?
- File too big? Use the video compressor with a target size in MB. Lowering the resolution to 720p usually saves more than lowering the quality slider.
- Won’t play or upload? Convert to MP4 with H.264 video and AAC audio: it plays on almost every phone, computer, TV and website. MOV to MP4 and MKV to MP4 often finish in seconds because the video does not need re-encoding.
- Wrong length? Trim video removes the start and end, the video cutter removes a section from the middle, and split video makes several shorter files.
- Wrong shape? Crop video cuts away edges, rotate video fixes sideways phone clips, and the aspect ratio converter pads or crops to 16:9, 9:16, 1:1 or 4:5.
- Privacy before sharing? Face blur video, blur video and remove video metadata (which can include the GPS location where it was filmed).
Tips for smaller, sharper videos
- Keep the original file. Every re-encode loses a little quality, so always work from the camera or phone original rather than a copy that has already been compressed or sent through a chat app.
- Resolution matters more than people expect: a 4K phone video viewed on a phone looks almost the same at 1080p and is roughly a quarter of the size.
- For sharing, 30 frames per second is plenty for most content; 60 fps doubles the frames the encoder has to store.
- HEVC (H.265) and AV1 make smaller files than H.264 at the same quality, but older devices and some websites cannot play them. Choose H.264 when you are not sure.
- Use the video bitrate calculator to work out the bitrate for a size limit before you compress.
Video Tools: frequently asked questions
Are my videos uploaded to a server?
No. The tools decode and encode the video inside your browser tab, and the result is saved straight to your device. Only the tool’s own code is downloaded.
Which browsers work best?
Current Chrome, Edge and Opera on desktop and Android support every tool, with hardware acceleration. Safari and Firefox support most of them; where a browser lacks a codec, the tool says so and suggests an alternative.
Is there a file size limit?
There is no upload limit because nothing is uploaded, but your device’s memory sets a practical one. Phones handle clips of a few hundred MB comfortably; for multi-GB files a computer is faster and more reliable.
Why is converting MOV to MP4 sometimes instant and sometimes slow?
If the video inside the MOV is already H.264 or HEVC, the tool copies it into an MP4 container without re-encoding, which takes seconds and loses nothing. If the codec must change, every frame is decoded and encoded again, which takes roughly as long as the video plays or less on a fast computer.
Will compressing reduce quality?
Compression removes detail the eye is least likely to notice, so a moderate reduction is hard to see. Very small targets, especially for long videos, become blocky. Lowering the resolution often looks better than squeezing a full-resolution video to the same size.
Can I add subtitles that viewers can turn off?
Yes. Add subtitles to video stores them as a separate track, which players can switch on and off; MKV has the widest player support for this. If the subtitles must always show, for example on social media, burn them into the picture instead.