Downloaded videos size too big, is there a way for smaller size??

[Dipendra Timilsina]

Hi ,

 just purchased the liscense today to make it easier. I downloaded videos in chrome with resolution options 1280 X 720  and 960 X 540 , There is not much difference in size in between these two but for good quality 1280 X 720 is best.  Problem is that i have downloaded 1 video file for more than 500mb . so is there any other settings i can try to reduce my video size for same resolution ? 

 any one please guide me , as i need to download hundred of videos for smaller space.

[Wild Willy]

Let's start by clicking this:

https://groups.google.com/g/video-downloadhelper-q-and-a/c/BzPLK2YyL-s

You will probably want to bookmark that for easy reference. I recommend you read that
entire thread, if not now, eventually. You will find that the very first link within
that thread is to a tutorial on how to use VDH. It uses a YouTube clip as a
demonstration example. I show in there how to select various different resolutions of
the given video.

As you are reading through that thread past the link to the tutorial, you'll come across
2 references to how post a proper problem report. You can jump quickly to those
references by doing a string search on "problem report" in there. You will see 2 links
that you should click. Read the advice you find & follow it. It would be most helpful,
especially to you, to post a proper problem report here. You do that by clicking the
Reply all button. DO NOT USE the Reply to author button. The way to add a post to a
thread is the Reply all button. What you should post now with the Reply all button is a
proper problem report. It will help both of us to continue this conversation in a useful
manner.

The tutorial I refer you to above uses a YouTube example. Other sites usually have their
own ways, different from YouTube's approach, of selecting from among multiple
resolutions. But not all sites offer multiple resolutions of their content. They offer
what they offer & you are stuck with it. VDH is stuck with it. We could discuss your
particular case in more detail once you post a proper problem report.

When you get a file at a given resolution, its size is whatever the web site offers. If
that size is too large for you, you probably have to download a lower resolution variant,
if such a resolution is available. VDH does not control the size of what you download, &
there is no VDH Setting for controlling the size of the file you download. The web site
controls that. Your only option is to select a resolution that is low enough to suit
your requirements. On some sites, they provide enough information for VDH to display on
its menu the size of the file you'll get with each variant. But not all web sites
provide this information. There is no international standard for the way web sites
present their multimedia content, so VDH is at the mercy of whatever the particular web
site does. Again, we could talk further about this after you post a proper problem
report.

There is probably a way to shrink a video clip using ffmpeg. That's not something I've
done but I believe I've read some things that lead me to believe this is possible. It's
way, way, way more complicated than just telling VDH to download a lower resolution
variant. Besides, whatever ffmpeg would do is probably equivalent to just downloading
the thing in the first place at a lower resolution. When it comes to resolution versus
file size, it's always going to be a tradeoff. You have to decide whether resolution or
size is more important & choose the variant offered in the VDH menu accordingly.

[Dipendra Timilsina]

Thank you for the proper reply willy, i understood by seeing those 23 jpeg files. i understood that VDH doesn't control the size but a website does it. i am actually downloading something for my education purposes but not from youtube and free website. According to your reply i think size can't be reduced so easily, as website is controlling the size . i can download with lesser resolution with resolution options there but lesser resolution doesn't work with me. i am using chrome extension with video downloadhelper 7.6.0.0 downloading with DASH streaming with resolution 1280 X 720 suits for me but 37 min video has 490 mb size and its taking my space much ,as i need to download tons of videos.

 Other options you said is like ffmpeg which seems complicated, as i am not familiar with it. other 3rd party app might not be free anyway. well if there is any easy way  please let me know

Thank you once again

[Wild Willy]

1280x720, 37 min, 490M seems reasonable. If you have so many videos you need to download
-- I use the word "need" because that's the word you use -- then I would suggest you
invest in some terabyte size hard drives. Plural. More than one. Again, it's a
tradeoff between what you have to do & what you need to spend on computer hardware.
There's always a cost. You're going to have to decide what you're willing to spend on
resolution vs file size vs disk space. I can't make that decision for you. I can only
point out the factors involved & you need to consult your wallet to reach a decision that
works for you.

[Dipendra Timilsina]

Thank for your response Willy,  if that size was reasonable for that lenght of videos then it's ok. But i have downloaded the video with about 139mb for 49 only min video from other website. i think this again depends on website what you said earlier. Well, i have terabytes of hard drive to fill up those videos but still space consume is heavy anyway. Let me know if there is any good one time paid software for size reduction without affecting the resolution easily and quickly ? Otherwise increasing the size of hard disk is only the option i think.

[Wild Willy]

Resolution is not the only factor that affects file size. One site may have a 30 minute
video at 1280x720 that occupies 200M, and another site may have a video of a similar
duration & the same resolution that occupies 500M. The difference is the quality of the
video. Same resolution, different quality. Note how resolution & quality are not the
same thing. It has to do with the way the video is encoded on each web site. If you're
using Windows, you can see this in the file properties. Just pop up the context menu on
the file & select the menu entry for Properties. Then go to the Details tab. You'll see
some entries there for bit rates. I'm attaching a couple of examples from my own system.
Sample Video 1 has much higher bit rates than Sample Video 2. Even though they are the
same resolution, the quality of Sample Video 1 is visibly better than the quality of
Sample Video 2. The image is sharper & details are easier to see in the higher quality
video even though they are the same resolution.

I believe a great deal of the confusion about resolution vs quality comes from YouTube's
unfortunate choice to use the word "quality" where they should be using "resolution."
YouTube compresses their content a lot because they have such a vast archive of content.
Their quality is uniformly low at all resolutions. But they try to trick you into
thinking you're getting something of a better quality when it's just a higher resolution
at the same rather poor quality.

I suspect that unless you're willing to learn a whole lot more about video editing than I
know, you'll be stuck with your situation as it is now. I can't recommend any software,
paid or otherwise, that will compress your videos. I think that's what you want to look
for: software to compress video content. I have done no investigation on this so you're
on your own with this. Personally, I like the highest resolutions at the highest quality
& I'm ready to add however much disk space as I need to to get what I want. Fortunately,
I don't keep everything I download so I should be able to avoid another expansion for at
least a couple of years.

[Dipendra Timilsina]

Thank you willy for the explanations and examples you showed. Now got some ideas how it makes differences in quality versus size. I think it is better to go with your idea saving with good resolution making some space. I have couple of other  questions, there is analyze page icon which doesn't do anything when i click. is this icon for screenshots ? i am trying to get easy way for screenshot if VDH can do? if it can't do i wil find the other way. VDH can download files from protected sites that might be impossible with other downloader i guess, is it legal to download from any encripted site ?  Isn't there copyright issues dowloading  with this downloader ? Just a query.

[Wild Willy]

The Analyze Page function rescans a page looking for variants to list in the VDH menu.
If it doesn't find anything new, it will seem like clicking the button did nothing. But
it did something. Trust it.

VDH doesn't capture screenshots. But you should have a key on your keyboard that says
Print Screen or PrtScr or PS or PScr or some other variation on that theme. When you
click that key, the image of the current contents of your computer monitor goes into the
system clipboard. You're supposed to then go to an image processing application (like MS
Paint or something similar). Then you paste your image in there & save it to your hard
drive under some name & in some format like .png or .gif or .jpg. Then you can do
whatever you want with the image, like attach it to a post here. That's what I do to
attach images to my posts, example being my most recent previous post. There is also a
screenshot feature built into Firefox. Click mouse button 2 anywhere within a web page
in a Firefox window to pop up a context menu. One of the options on the menu is Take
Screenshot. Experiment with that.

When you say "protected sites" there's a couple of levels of protection. If it's just a
site where you need a user ID & password, even a site behind a paywall, there's a good
chance VDH can still download content from the site. I download stuff from behind a
paywall using VDH all the time. But there's another level of protection called Digital
Rights Management. DRM. This is a technique that is expressly meant to prevent
downloads. Look back at my first post upthread here. Click the link I gave. Then do a
string search on "drm" in there. There's more than one search hit so don't just stop on
the first one. You'll find some discussion of DRM. If content is protected by DRM,
regardless of whether you need to log in or whether the content is behind a paywall, VDH
will not download it. Doing so would be illegal. So if you can download something, it's
legal to do it. If you can't, investigate whether it's protected by DRM, as I explain in
the reference in the other thread. If it's behind DRM protection, you can't download it.
However, there are recording software applications out there that record both the video &
audio of whatever is happening on your computer screen. That's different from
downloading. It doesn't copy the file from the serving web site. It just records
whatever you're doing on your computer. So if you want to record a 3 hour movie, you
have to let your computer sit there playing the movie for 3 hours while the recorder
records, & you probably can't do anything else on your computer at the same time. Like I
said, not like downloading. But it's a way of making a copy of DRM protected material.
I use a screen recording application called OBS but there are others out there. Do some
web searches on that if you're interested.

[Dipendra Timilsina]

Thank you Willy for explaining, so i like to know if i download from password protected site will they know i have downloaded their file ? if its legal its fine.yeah for screenshot i tired to use Prt Sc but i doesn't function.  Then i go to seetings make it on but still it doesnt work  and  i tried with OBS again it doesn't work even i set the source key for screenshot and as you said i used firefox as option that works well anyway as i need to screenshots thousands of MCQ , so trying find the shortcut way for time saving.thanks for this information anyway. 

I have some download problem using VDH. i downloaded the video file with 1280 X 720 it downloaded the file but it was black only audio was running ,i am sharing the details screenshot here of that black screen with audio play only if it is due to video frame rates or any other issues, jus t check it.  then i tired with 960 X 540 , again same problem then i tried with 640 X 360, this time it works i have  attached snap shots details that works fine with video and audio both.Not all videos have that issue but some videos have that issues. I tried to aggregate local files with audio and video but it was too slow to convert not even have 1 % complete in 10 mins so i aborted the action.

Let me know if there is any solution about this kind of problem,  happy to see the solutions from your side.

[jcv...@gmail.com]

Sometimes audio and video are sent in 2 separate streams, generally occurs with high resolution versions.

In this case you'll have to find audio and video, and merge them : no sound : solutions

jerome

[Wild Willy]

I just realized you haven't posted a proper problem report anywhere in this thread. I
probably should have asked you for one sooner. I guess we were talking about more
theoretical issues but now it seems you are having problems with a specific video. So
you need to go back to the Table of Contents thread, do a string search on "problem
report" in there, & give us a proper problem report.

If a site is password protected, that does not have any impact on whether anything you
try to download from there is legally downloaded. With or without a password, if VDH
downloads it, it's legal to do so. VDH uses information freely supplied by the web site,
no matter whether there's a password involved. If VDH can read the information, then the
web site offered it, so it's legal to download. A password is not a factor in this.
Whether the site knows you have downloaded from there depends on the metrics the web site
collects. VDH does not look any different to a web site than an embedded video player on
a web page. So if they collect the information, they would do it if you use their video
player & they would do it if you use VDH. It's something the web site either does or
does not do. VDH makes you neither more nor less visible to the web site. The question
is not whether you use VDH. The question is whether the web site collects those
statistics.

Aggregating audio with video can take a while. It depends on your inputs & outputs. You
do need to be extra patient with those functions. Still, progress should be steady, even
if it is slow. Canceling the aggregation was probably the right thing to do. I suspect
your inputs were not what you thought they were. But before we even deal with this, you
need to post that proper problem report. I suspect once we get your download problem
figured out, the aggregating problem will solve itself.