Whenever I try to edit a video, the final file size becomes larger than the original size. What settings should I apply in the export section?
It is counterintuitive for many people to find out that video loses quality every time it is re-encoded. Shotcut is set with a default quality setting to preserve the original quality. If you want the export file to be smaller than the source file, you can turn down the quality. After you do, have a good look at the export file and make sure you are satisfied with the result.
Here is how to reduce the quality…
In the export panel, click on “Advanced”
Click on the “Codec” tab…
Turn down the “Quality” parameter. Maybe try 45 and see what you think:
Is there a way to do this without losing quality? I even trimmed a part of a video, and although the resulting video is shorter, its file size is much larger than the original.
Can you share a screenshot of the Shotcut properties panel when the clip is selected? We can try to match the parameters of your source clip.
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As you can see the resulting trimmed video has a size of 18.6 MB, whereas the main file is only 7.25 MB Size.
There is only one way to not lose quality but it only works in a very specific workflow: if you need to trim only one continuous section from a video. Select the (trimmed) clip on the timeline and in the properties panel → bottom left 3 lines menu → Extract sub-clip.
Anything else will have to fully reconvert the clip so some details are lost or file is bigger.
We still can’t see the properties of your source file. In Shotcut, navigate to “View->Properties” and then click on the clip. Maybe your source clip is H.265.
Original video: 640x360 25 fps
Export panel: 1280x720 30 fps
Maybe this is the problem.
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I changed the resolution from 1280Ă—720 to 640Ă—360 and reduced the frame rate from 30 to 25 fps in the Export > Advanced settings. However, the resulting video (13.8 MB) is still larger than the original, and the video quality has noticeably decreased.
Do NOT change the Advanced settings in the export panel.
Change the Settings > Video Mode to match your original source clips. Then, when you export, the export panel will reflect the Video Mode. You should not need to change anything in the Export Panel.
I tried creating a custom video mode (named A1) in the video mode section, similar to the main video’s resolution and frame rate, but the resulting video is still larger than the main video.
It is should be larger as was mentioned in the very first reply.
The problem is that your source video is very heavily compressed. There is no way to reduce size when trimming and keep original quality except by avoiding a re-encode. And @daniel47 already mentioned how to do this above using Extract Sub-clip. So, at this point, you need to re-read everything mentioned here and stop insisting for an impossible combination of things that makes it seem like you are not reading or understanding the provided help. If you have trouble understanding, you can read more about digital video, in general, or better yet: stop looking at file size when you are dealing with such small files anyways.
Unfortunately, this issue also occurs when working with large files, and the output file is always larger than the original. It’s surprising that when I cut a portion of a video using online sites like “ezgif.com,” the resulting file is smaller than the original, but this doesn’t happen with your software.
If you really need to compress as much as possible while staying within the h264 codec, then I can give you the following advice:
- In the “Codec” tab, increase the GOP as high as possible (I set it to 600).
- Set the B frame from 1 to 4 (default is 0).
- In the “Other” tab, write preset=veryslow, this can slow down the file export, but at the expense of compressing the video file more.
The audio bitrate also affects the size of the video file, if your video does not have critical audio material, you can lower the bitrate from 384 to 128-192, most people will not hear the difference in sound and the exported file will take up less space.
And also, you need to remember that hardware codecs (nvenc, qsv, vaapi) are less efficient and create much larger files than software codec xlib264.
Yes, because those sites used lower quality settings. If quality settings are lowered in Shotcut, it can make smaller files too.