Video formats can be a mess. One won’t play on your TV, another is too large for email, and a third won’t import into your editing software. When that happens, a good video converter can save you a lot of frustration.
If you need to convert a video so it plays on another device, takes up less space, or works in your editing software, these are the two free tools I recommend most:
HandBrake: The best tool for making videos smaller
HandBrake is the one I go to when my goal is to shrink video files without giving up much quality. It’s a free, open-source video encoder that converts almost any video into modern codecs such as H.264, H.265 (HEVC), AV1, and VP9.
It keeps things relatively simple. Just load your video and choose one of the built-in presets before converting. There are presets for phones, tablets, YouTube, and general playback, so you rarely need to change the advanced settings. It also supports batch encoding if you have multiple videos to compress.
If you’re running out of storage or trying to meet an upload size limit, HandBrake is where you should turn first.
Shutter Encoder: An all-around media conversion tool
Shutter Encoder has a bit more going on under the hood and compression is only one piece of what it does. Think of it as a toolbox for working with media files. Built on FFmpeg, it supports an enormous range of video, audio, and image formats along with dozens of production tools.
You can trim clips, merge videos, extract or replace audio, crop footage, generate subtitles, normalize audio, convert image formats, and much more—all from the same interface.
If you mostly want smaller video files, HandBrake is the better pick. If you regularly edit, convert, or prepare media files for different projects, Shutter Encoder is the more capable tool. Personally, I keep both installed because each excels at a different job.
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