Readme.md

🎬 Video Compressor (ffmpeg + Gradio)

This project is a simple video compression tool built with Gradio for the user interface and FFmpeg for the actual compression.
It allows you to upload a video, set the CRF (Constant Rate Factor) value for compression quality, and download the compressed video.
A real-time progress bar shows the compression progress.

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🚀 Features

• Upload common video formats: .mp4, .avi, .mov, .mkv
• Compress videos using H.265 (HEVC) codec (libx265)
• Adjust CRF (23 = high quality, 32 = lower quality but smaller file size)
• Real-time progress updates during compression
• Automatic file size comparison after compression
• Download compressed video directly
• Built with Gradio UI → lightweight and easy to run

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🛠 Requirements

• Python 3.9+ recommended

• Install dependencies:

  pip install gradio
  

• Install FFmpeg (required for video compression).

  • On macOS (Homebrew):

    brew install ffmpeg
    

  • On Ubuntu/Debian:

    sudo apt update && sudo apt install ffmpeg
    

  • On Windows: Download FFmpeg and add it to your PATH.

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📂 Project Structure

video-compressor/
│── app.py            # Main Python script (the Gradio app)
│── README.md         # Documentation

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▶️ Usage

Run the app locally with:

python app.py

Then open your browser at: http://127.0.0.1:7860

1. Upload a video file
2. Choose compression level (CRF)
   • Lower CRF = higher quality, larger file size
   • Higher CRF = lower quality, smaller file size
   • Default: 28 (balanced)
3. Click "Compress Video"
4. Wait for the progress bar to reach 100%
5. Download your compressed video

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⚙️ How It Works

1. The app calls ffprobe to read the video duration.
2. It runs ffmpeg with libx265 codec and user-specified CRF.
3. While running, stderr output from ffmpeg is parsed (time=HH:MM:SS.xx) to update progress.
4. After finishing, the app calculates:
   • Original size (MB)
   • New size (MB)
   • Reduction percentage
5. Displays results + download link for the compressed file.

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📊 Example Results

• Original: 100 MB
• Compressed: 35 MB
• Reduced by: 65% 🎉

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🧩 Code Highlights

• Helper functions keep the code clean:
  • get_video_duration() → fetch video length with ffprobe
  • build_ffmpeg_command() → builds ffmpeg CLI command
  • summarize_compression() → calculates file size reduction
• Unified exception handling with safe_none_on_error()
• Progress tracking uses regex on ffmpeg stderr

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🔮 Future Improvements

• Option to downscale resolution (1080p → 720p, 480p)
• Add support for different codecs (VP9, AV1)
• Cloud deployment with Hugging Face Spaces or Docker

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📜 License

MIT License. Free to use and modify.

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👨‍💻 Author

Developed by Pavel Lakov
🔗 GitHub