Best Video Compression Settings: A Practical Cheat Sheet
Most video compression software exposes dozens of options — codec, profile, preset speed, keyframe interval, chroma subsampling — but for 95% of real-world use, only three settings actually change the outcome you'll notice: CRF, resolution, and target bitrate/size. Here's a cheat sheet mapping common goals to settings, without the encoder jargon.
Quick reference table
| Goal | Setting | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Archive/master copy | CRF 16-18, keep source resolution | Preserve as much detail as possible for future re-edits |
| General sharing (social, messaging) | CRF 22-24, 1080p max | Best balance of size and quality for screens people actually view on |
| Hard upload limit (Discord, email) | Target file size mode | Guarantees you land under the cap instead of guessing a CRF value |
| Slow connection / storage constrained | CRF 26-28 + 720p | Maximum size reduction; acceptable for casual viewing only |
| Screen recording / tutorial | CRF 20-22, remove audio if silent | Screen content compresses very efficiently; low motion needs less bitrate |
The one rule that matters more than any setting
Always compress from your highest-quality original, once. Re-compressing an already-compressed file, or compressing in multiple passes with different tools, compounds quality loss in ways no single setting can fix afterward. If you have the original camera export, start there — not from a version you already shared on social media (which has already been re-compressed by the platform).
Try the settings above
Shrynk covers two of the three levers directly: its quality presets map to CRF 28/23/18, and target-size mode does the bitrate math for hard limits automatically. It doesn't include a resolution/resize control, though — if a row in the table above recommends a specific resolution (like "1080p max"), that means exporting or recording at that resolution before you compress, not something the compressor itself changes.
FAQ
Does encoder "preset speed" (fast/slow) affect quality?
Slightly — slower presets squeeze marginally more quality out of the same CRF/bitrate, but the difference is small compared to CRF itself. Speed presets are a time-vs-efficiency trade-off, not a quality ceiling.
Is H.265/HEVC worth using instead of H.264?
HEVC achieves the same quality at roughly 30-40% smaller file size, but has less universal playback support, especially in browsers and older devices. H.264 remains the safer default for anything you're sharing broadly.
Want these settings applied automatically across a whole folder of footage? The Shrynk desktop app handles batch jobs with saved presets, for a one-time $9.