xjdwc thats pretty badass but I don't need all the encryption and privacy per se, it's just only rock and roll I'm sending🙂 --I did read the Terms of Service/Privacy tab because I'm a weirdo and I read those everywhere I go. Filed for sure.

    alfisya I will try this and check the quality/size later. I have heard ffmpeg had these capabilities, thank you

      You can share individual files in GDrive and make them completely public to anyone with the link. Then just send the link to them.

      alfisya Way out site didnt know that animal existed.
      Was just reading up on fffmpeg when you posted that.
      Thanks

          Axios There is also GUI for FFmpeg for encoding/decoding(?) in the repo called winff. It's very old, there is a setting for blackberry device. More recent one I found is videomass available as appimage.

              Use Youtube if you have an account, excellent video converter.
              Upload your video, keep it private etc, then download it from youtube studio.
              I did this several time, a 720p 350Mb video can finish 30Mb still 720p on your computer in mp4 format.

              "I'll be happy to put it on your thumb drive when you bring it to me"

                murbert "It's been a couple weeks. Do you still have my thumb drive?"

                    brent This is why you put it on their thumb drive

                      alfisya Ya I got winff on other machine never used it much just didnt do it for me.

                        alfisya I remember videomass now after I downloaded it
                        I could never get the appimage to work on my installs

                          alfisya it's interesting. In the output of my tries the Commander uses handbrake as an encoder. Finding the sweet spot between quality/MB right now in Commander's settings but they are all increasing the 50MB source file size...maybe the COmmander's Presets are not where I should be shrinking the m4v?
                          Will keep playing.

                              brent MP4 H.265,H.264 is prob your best bet
                              Lowering bitrate decreases file size but reduces quality of video.
                              I have a prog but its on a old computer you put some info in and it came up with the desired bitrate
                              But you got to think maybe there isnt much there to work with if its not raw video to start with.
                              Kinda like a flac audio file its raw audio and you can downgrade it to any the other formats with no problem.
                              If it is already mp4 or something whatever you do is going make it worse. (probably)
                              Follow?
                              Note always record audio/video in raw if you plan to edit heavy. I havent kept up with all the video advances
                              but thats the basics.

                                  Axios It's a 5 minute live performance that I extracted a from DVD in Handbrake, in Solus.
                                  Handbrake saved it high quality, in an .m4v format which I never heard of but now I know it's in the family of .mp4...
                                  5 minutes=50MB when I look at it that way. That's about right, isn't it?

                                  I heard h264/265 was my goal. no 265 in Commander but some 264's...all increased size..

                                  strangely when I began this fruitless journey with Handbrake and ended with it---dig this: when I just saved in the Handbrake 264/265 they shrunk a little but quality on the eyeballs was lo-res harsh.

                                  Axios If it is already mp4 or something whatever you do is going make it worse.
                                  Follow?

                                  Now I do!

                                  Axios Kinda like a flac audio file its raw audio and you can downgrade it to any the other formats with no problem.

                                  Yes. those kind of compression changes I don't have a music pro's ear to notice. correct. but seeing a different story here w/the video.

                                  It's funny to me in 2023 all sorts of Great Software is compressed into an email-able 7zip, Zip, Targz, etc etc that you have to extract to decompress.....but also in 2023 you can't do that with a video file... 🙁.

                                  edit; thanks for the great reply

                                          brent Can handbrake extract it as avi (avi=Raw)?
                                          5min at 720 is around 55mb
                                          5min at 480 is around 19mb
                                          5min at 360 is around 15mb
                                          approximates

                                              Axios I think I can do that in handbrake...I knew AVI was an older viable format...will try it a different night. what's special about AVI?

                                                  brent It is raw its exactly what your extracting just in avi format.
                                                  An Image lets say.
                                                  Am hoping if you do thats its about double in size or more.
                                                  Those previous sizes I gave would be the end result.

                                                    It's not that difficult. First of all MP4, MKV, AVI, WebM, VOB[...] are container formats that stores the video und audio streams, subtitles etc.
                                                    Different containers support different video codecs such as AVC/h.264, HEVC/h.265, VP8, VP9, AV1, MPEG-2, XviD.
                                                    For example x264 is an software encoder for h.264 and x265 is an software endcoder for h.265.

                                                    To check whats inside a container simply user the tool called Mediainfo. It will give you all important information about bitrate, framerate, resolution, codec etc.
                                                    sudo eopkg install mediainfo

                                                    Just open a video file with the GUI and switch to text view or use it with the terminal
                                                    mediainfo [path videofile]

                                                    The reason your output video got a bigger size then your source video is because it was already encoded with a pretty high quantizer. A high quantizer means high compression. So to shrink it even more you need an unusal high quantization. x264 and x265 control this with the constant(quality) rate factor(CRF) in Handbrake. A higher CRF will shrink the video more and of course decreases the quality. The Bitrate is the only thing that affects the size of an video.

                                                    If your video is 50Mb and has a duration of 5 minutes it's bitrate will be ~ 1300kbps(minus bitrate for the audio stream) which is already pretty low. For example DVDs usually have an average video bitrate of ~ 6000kbps. (but use a very very outdated codec)
                                                    With a modern codec like h.265 or VP9 or AV1 it could be possible to reduce the size about 50% (depents on the source and it's amount of grain, noise and motion) but shrinking it to 10Mb will definitely destroy the picture quality way too hard.

                                                    To shrink an video to a preferred file size I would recommend to use one or better multipass encoding with an fixed average bitrate. (can be done in Handbrake too).
                                                    Another very good video editing and transcoding tool is Avidemux.