How to compress video online without losing quality?

Looking here if you are going to compress video online, FFV1 is a lossless video compression algorithm. This means it compresses video without any loss of quality, preserving every detail from the original source. It's an excellent choice for applications like archiving raw footage or, as in one example, encoding thermal camera data.

The key challenge is that it requires a specific setup and is not found in standard online video compressors. The codec is typically used within the command-line tool, and using it effectively requires understanding its parameters, such as the videoCodec, pixelformat, and codec:preset settings.

Because FFV1 is not an "online" tool, you have a few options to run it on your Windows PC:

1. Self-Hosted Web Application: A project like 8mb.local aims to provide an online-style experience through a self-hosted web application. It can be run locally via Docker or as a native Windows executable and works with hardware encoding like NVENC, Quick Sync, and AMD AMF. While its primary focus is likely on lossy compression for file size, the underlying engine could be configured to use FFV1. However, this is a complex setup, requiring knowledge of Docker or building from source.

2. Directly with FF mpeg (Advanced): The most direct way to compress video online (or offline) using FFV1 is to use a local instance of FF mpeg. This is a command-line tool, making it a complex but powerful method. An example of an FF mpeg command using FFV1 looks like this:

ff mpeg -i <input_video> -vcodec ffv1 -level 3 -threads 8 -coder 1 -context 1 -g 1 -slices 24 -slicecrc 1 <output_video>

This level of control is what makes it a challenging and complex method.

Key Considerations

* File Sizes: Lossless codecs like FFV1 produce very large files. If you are looking to significantly reduce a video's file size for sharing or storage, FFV1 is generally the wrong tool. Its purpose is to preserve every detail for editing or archiving, not for creating small files.

* Performance: Encoding with FFV1, especially with a slow preset like "veryslow", is computationally intensive and can take a significant amount of time.