How can I reduce the size of a video in 5 minutes while maintaining a good quality? [GUIDE]

The Shift Project wishes to provide all video producers with a 4-page Guide that will help them reduce the size of a video while maintaining a good quality.

Why this Guide?

The aim is to contribute to digital sobriety, in order to avoid climate chaos and slow the depletion of resources. Video data-flows account for 80% of annual Internet traffic and are increasing. Reducing the size of your videos reduces the energy required to broadcast them and therefore the greenhouse gases emissions associated with it. Reducing the size of online videos is a first step towards a more sober internet.

What if I want to use this Guide?

Guide

You are free to use and distribute this Guide: that’s precisely why it was created in the first place! Feel free to spread the word, for example by referring to this page. As we use this process ourselves, we communicate on it on our videos posted on YouTube since May 2019. For example, you can write under your videos or somewhere else:


The size of this video has been reduced because reducing their size reduces the energy required to broadcast it, and therefore the associated greenhouse gas emissions. Here is a short guide that allows you to significantly reduce the size of your videos: https://theshiftproject.org/en/guide-reduce-weight-video-5-minutes/

To whom do we owe this Guide?

This guide was created by Gauthier Roussilhe, a designer committed to a low-tech approach, and finalized with the team of the think tank The Shift Project, whose report “Lean ICT: Towards Digital Sobriety” was published in 2019.