Overview
The native format of iPhone and iPad recording is in .MOV, which is a non-compressed/raw format. You can significantly reduce the size of your recording by converting to MP4. There are multiple ways to do this, though VLC media player makes it quite easy.
Instructions:
- Open VLC media Player (Download link in case you don’t have it)
- Go to File > Convert/Save (Or Media > Convert/Stream)
- Click “Add Media” and browse to the MOV file or drag it into this window. Once it shows in the window, make sure the Choose Profile Section shows “Video H.264 + MP3 (MP4)”
- Click Browse to choose a destination file. The same folder is fine, make sure the new extension is listed as shown here after you confirm the folder location.
Note: it’s possible to convert from MP4 to MP4 and still achieve a level of compression. In that case, you’ll need to change the destination folder or rename the file it so it’s different than the source file.
- Click Save and let it process! The processing time is usually a little faster than the video itself, so this could take a while for large files. You WILL notice your computer fan turn on, this is processor intensive. Any other application you are trying to run will also appear to slow down. This is normal.
Typical compression example. The example video started as a 459Mb MOV file and was converted to a 136Mb M4V file. A file size reduction of 33% is typical.