- Are you wondering how to compress video files
or convert video files online to another format
without the need for downloading?
On this video I'm gonna show you a simple way
that's both fast and easy using an online video converter.
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Hey, it's Justin Brown here from Primal Video
where we help entrepreneurs and business owners
amplify their business and brand with video.
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and all the links to everything we mention
in this video, you can find linked
in the description box below.
So, let's jump into it.
Now, if you've got video files,
or audio files for that matter,
that are up in the cloud somewhere,
and you want to convert them to another format,
then traditionally you'd need to download them
to your computer and do it locally
using software like HandBrake.
It takes time to download the files back to your computer,
and depending on your internet,
it could take a really long time to do that.
And then it also takes time or decent hardware
to be able to perform the conversion
or the transcoding of the files.
And after all of that's happened,
often you'll have to reupload the file afterwards,
which again, is more time.
Fortunately, now there's ways
to get the whole thing done online
and even link to files in places
like Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, or even just a URL.
So, we're gonna run through the process step by step
and show you how to convert your video files online
and create either smaller, more download friendly versions
of your videos or even just convert
or transcode them to another file format.
First up, let's take a quick look at the advantages
and the disadvantages of getting your videos converted
or transcoded in the cloud.
So, starting off with the advantages then,
the first one is that the transcoding
or the actual converting of a video file,
is actually really, really fast.
I would say most cases, it's going to be much, much faster
to get your video files transcoded or converted
in the cloud rather than downloading them
and then using something like HandBrake to convert it
and then reuploading the file back
to your cloud file hosting place.
It's gonna be much, much faster to do it all in the cloud.
There's also no software that's required,
so you don't need to download
and install anything on your computer,
and then worry about if it's compatible
with Mac or PC or Chrome or Linux.
There's no software required,
as everything is run through your web browser.
You also have access to really powerful computer hardware,
which is why the transcoding or converting is done so quick,
much, much faster than
if you were using your local computer.
Another advantage is that it's actually surprisingly
really, really cheap to have your files
or your video files converted in the cloud,
especially of you're using a service like CloudConvert.
CloudConvert has a free option,
but even its paid options start
at around 1.6 cents per minute of video footage.
So that's just insane.
Gee, it's just downpouring outside,
so if you're hearing that, that's what it is.
You also get really great integration
with other cloud platforms as well.
So, things like Google Drive, like Dropbox, like Box.net,
you literally can just transfer the files between them,
have them rendered, have them automatically come back
into a particular folder that you want
on your cloud hosting platform.
So, that is just amazing.
And as for the disadvantages of online cloud conversion
or cloud video file transcoding,
the biggest thing is that your files
already need to be in the cloud,
or you need a decent internet connection
to get them there fast,
otherwise, you could probably just get away
with queuing the transcodes
or the conversions up on your computer
and letting them run overnight or waiting it out.
So, if your files are already up there on the internet,
or you've got really fast internet connection,
then this is gonna be suited for you.
And the other disadvantage or thing that you need
to be aware of is, depending on where you want
to use files after transcoding or converting them,
you actually may need to download them
to your computer again.
And if you've got slow internet,
then that's gonna be a painful process.
But, where we said this works really, really well
is having the ability to transcode or convert a video file
from one format to another
or from one quality to another quality online
without the need for downloading it,
running the conversion and reuploading it
back to your cloud hosting.
So, right now our recommendation
for online cloud based file conversion or transcoding
is a platform called CloudConvert.
And like I said, they've got pricing options
starting at free, which will give you
25 conversion minutes per day,
but it does have a one gig maximum file size.
There's also prepaid packages
with 500 conversion minutes for around $8.00,
and you've also got a monthly subscription option
there as well starting at around $8.00 per month
giving you 1000 conversion minutes per month,
so lots of options.
So let's take a look at CloudConvert,
and do a step by step walkthrough on how it works.
You can see there's a heap of file types supported,
from audio, CAD documents, documents, ebooks,
presentations, spread sheets, vector images,
and if we go to video,
you can see here all the different types of video files
and video formats that are supported.
And yes, all of the big ones are in there.
To actually convert a file,
all you need to do on the main home page,
after you've logged in, is select your file.
And you get to choose if it's from a URL,
from Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, or Box.
So, for this one we're gonna choose
a file from Google Drive.
And here is my Google Drive, so let's go Videos,
let's pick this video file here, and Select.
This is actually a really short video file.
So should be a quick test here.
Once we've got our file in there,
we can set what we want to convert it to.
So you can see, it's an MP4 file.
We can choose MP4 again
and obviously set our parameters around that file,
or we can actually choose other file formats too,
like some of the other ones we saw in there.
However, this one we'll leave it as MP4.
Let's just go to Settings.
In here you've actually got some pretty cool options.
You can trim down your video.
So you can change the start time
so that it starts later in your video.
So you can trim off the start,
or you can have it finish earlier,
so you can trim off the end.
You also get to choose your video codec,
or you can keep it the same without re-encoding it,
but I'll tell you this is where most people
are going to want to make the biggest change.
So let's pick H264,
and then once we pick our video codec,
then we can choose all the settings around it.
Now the default for most settings
in this panel is to leave things as they were,
so that way you only need to make changes
to the things that you wanna change,
and everything else will be left as they originally were.
So the most important one here
if you're gonna adjust the quality,
would be your Video Constant Quality
or your bit rate for the video.
So it's suggesting 23 as normal quality,
but you can lower the quality by picking a lower bit rate.
So, for this case we're gonna choose 5.
Now as you can see,
you also get control over your video aspect ratio.
So, if it was wide screen,
and you now wanna make it 4:3 or 1:1,
you can squash it or change it in here.
You can also adjust the video resolution.
So, say, if you're starting at 1080p video
and you want to compress to a 720p video,
then you can pick that here too.
So, for our video let's convert it to a 480p,
so we're really dropping the quality on it.
And you'd also change the video frame rate
or the frames per second,
and you can also change the rotation
or transpose your video here as well.
So you can rotate it
if it was around the wrong way or upside down.
You can do all of that here too.
And likewise with video,
you get same settings around audio.
So if you leave it the same,
it's gonna use the settings from the original file
and try and match those,
or you can manually specify the quality
and the format of your audio as well.
You also have the ability to add in subtitles,
and if you're feeling really advanced,
then you can add some custom ffmpeg commands
to your render as well.
But for most people, I would say these are the settings
that they're going to be playing with.
Once you're done, press Okay.
And then all you need to do is click Start Conversion.
And up to top here, you can see that
that's nearly done.
It's done.
It's saved to Google,
and it is totally done.
So, if we click on this now Show File,
gonna open up our Google Drive.
We're still processing on that,
but we should still be able to view the file.
Let's go back to Videos.
You can see now that we've got our original,
and we've also got
our nearly converted video file there as well.
If I delete this video file from here,
there's actually another way
that you can get your videos converted directly
from inside of Google Drive.
All you need to do is right-click on it,
and choose Open with, and then choose CloudConvert.
So now you can see CloudConvert we've got our original
that we just converted there,
the green one that's finished,
and we've got another file that's queued up,
it's actually the same file.
It's queued up again,
ready for us to specify our settings for that conversion.
So if you're working inside of Google Drive a lot,
then that can save you a couple of steps
to be able to do it straight from within Google Drive.
So that's it.
That's how easy it is to convert your video files online.
And as you saw, it's incredibly cheap to do it.
And in my opinion, this is really suited
for someone that already has their video files
in the cloud ready to go,
to save you downloading them back to your computer,
processing them through HandBrake or Media Encoder,
or any other program, converting them
and uploading them back to the cloud.
If your files are in there,
and you want the converted file
in there as well once it's done,
then this can be the perfect solution for you.
Now, if you do have crazy fast internet
and maybe a computer that's not so powerful,
and it would take a long time to do the conversion for you,
then this also might be for you,
but if your video files aren't already up in the cloud,
and maybe you've got slow internet
and it's gonna take a long time to get them up there,
then this probably won't be the best solution for you
to be able to convert your video files.
That's where something like HandBrake or Media Encoder
or even just general video editing software
can do the conversion for you.
Now if you're looking to speed up
your video editing process,
then check out the video linked on screen now,
where we talk through the most efficient process
for editing your videos down
without any wasted time or rework.
And I'll see you soon.