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Handbrake uses FFmpeg under the hood, so if you like a GUI that's probably the best option. For using FFmpeg directly, any LLM should be able to do a good job of devising the correct command line to do whatever you want. For Nostr I use h264 for the video codec for widest compatibility.

Don't listen to the H264 part. VP9 (or AV1) should come before H264. Can do both if a platform requires H264. Don't chase compatibility by doing shit wrong to be compatible with other people doing shit wrong. If you post a video on nostr correctly, it won't show in Primal because Primal sucks - don't pretend that's the good tech's fault

Here's an example of a video posted on nostr correctly - it doesn't show in Primal for me because Primal sucks and dickrides H264/MP4, but Ryan wants you to make that your problem by letting Primal demand you suck the same

I do agree with the ffmpeg/handbrake recommendations though

Thanks, anything else I should know about nitrate resolution, etc?

I usually drop the resolution for social media posting personally, 480 or 720 is fine. For the bitrate look into the crf (Constant Rate Factor) option. The higher you set this the lower the bitrate. Depending on the video it can save a lot of space without losing too much quality. `-c:v libx264 -crf 22 -preset slow` is a good baseline and adjust from there.

A pretty in depth article covering FFmpeg.

TheLinuxCode

How to Reduce Video Size with FFmpeg: An Expert‘s In-Depth Guide – TheLinuxCode

FFmpeg is an incredibly powerful open source multimedia toolkit that expert Linux users rely on for handling videos, audios, subtitles and more. In...

That's a good start. For social media these can take it even further. Get that 58 down to single digits.

Somewhat related subject, can these tools remove metadata as well?

Any video, yeah. Your phone saves for maximum quality. For posting on the Web you want to optimize for loading speed and bandwidth. Major platforms do this on their servers, Nostr doesn't have this yet unfortunately.

Ok good to know! Thanks Ryan 🙏

Phone videos are the worst. When I move them to other storage I always batch re-encode them.

Yeah I've of the clients that does. I get much better results with Proton though, smaller files with better quality.

True, it's not to be meant a high grade compression. Just a basic one to crunch the worst away...

This. When I vibed a game using avatars as game assets the biggest hurdle was optimizing them for use in game. Centralized services doing all the work for you has left most people ignorant of the importance of media optimization for Internet use unfortunately.