VCompress

A portable Electron app that compresses any video down to a target file size in MB — built primarily for sending clips in Discord, where the free tier caps uploads around 10-20 MB. You drop a video, tell it how big the result should be, and it figures out the bitrate needed to land there, then re-encodes with bundled FFmpeg.

Important

Choose the right download before installing:

• VCompress-Fast.zip — fastest NVIDIA GPU encoding, up to 40% faster than Compatible on supported systems. Uses BtbN FFmpeg and requires an NVIDIA driver 610.00 or newer. Best for modern RTX systems.
• VCompress-Compatible.zip — recommended when the NVIDIA driver is below 610.00, or when Fast says NVENC is unavailable. Uses Gyan FFmpeg and supports older NVIDIA driver branches, including many GTX 10xx / GTX 16xx PCs.

GPU codec support still depends on the hardware: AV1 NVENC requires RTX 40-series or newer; GTX 10xx / GTX 16xx use H.264 or H.265.

Recommended Quality Settings (H.265 if AV1 is unavailable)

Interface tour

Compress tab

Drop a video on the card or click to browse. You get one card with all the quick settings:

• Size — target output in megabytes.
• Resolution — output resolution, Keep Original keeps source size.
• FPS — output frame rate, or tick Match Source FPS in Settings to pull it from the loaded file.
• Audio — Remove strips sound, Audio Only exports MP3, or pick a bitrate 96–320 kbps.
• Compress — starts the job; shows progress and elapsed time while running.
• Save Location — where the result lands, plus Show in folder after finish.

Clip tab

Trim a segment before rendering. You can scrub the timeline, drag the range, and:

• Play / Pause and frame-step buttons under the player
• Zoom badge — current zoom level; scroll the mouse wheel over the timeline to zoom in/out
• Ctrl + scroll wheel — step frame-by-frame without moving the cursor
• Trim left / Trim right — snap the selection to the playhead
• Compress on the toolbar renders only the selected range

Settings tab

Fine-grained encoding options for the current run. These are applied to the next compression you start, not as app defaults:

• Encoding Device — GPU uses your graphics card for speed, CPU is slower but works everywhere. CPU also hits the target size more precisely — its 2-pass encode analyses the video first, then encodes with a tighter bitrate budget than the single-pass GPU path.
• Video Codec — H.264 for maximum compatibility, H.265 saves more size, AV1 gives the best quality per megabyte but encodes slower and needs a modern player (AV1 hardware encoding requires RTX 40-series+).
• Quality Bias — Faster Encode, Balanced or Better Quality: how much to trade encode time vs picture quality at the same target size.
• Audio Mode — Compress re-encodes sound to your chosen bitrate, Keep Original passes it through untouched.
• Match Source FPS — read FPS from the loaded video instead of typing it.
• Padding — pads the file with zero bytes to hit exactly the target size
• Size Tolerance MB — acceptable -/+ range around the target; leave Any to accept whatever the encoder produces.

Defaults tab

Startup defaults for new files. Changes here are saved to compressor_settings.json and used the next time the app opens — while Settings applies only to the current run.

Includes Overwrite Output: off (default) — re-compressing the same video produces name (1).mp4, name (2).mp4… like Explorer copies; on — replaces the previous result in place.

Audio tab

Pick which source audio tracks go into the output. Tracks carry their real names from the file metadata (e.g. System sounds / Microphone for NVIDIA App recordings), so you always know what you're keeping. Uncheck what you don't need.

Logs tab

Everything the encoder says: detected duration, bitrate, probes, retries, final size and full FFmpeg output. Copy Logs copies it for bug reports.

Build & run

Two ways to use it:

Portable (recommended) — download the release archive, unpack anywhere and run VCompress.exe. FFmpeg is bundled, nothing else is needed.

From source — needs Node.js:

setup.bat    :: installs Node.js (if missing) and deps
run.bat      :: visible console
run_hidden.vbs :: no console window

Build release zips yourself (both variants in one run):

build-release.bat

This produces dist\VCompress-Fast-win64.zip (BtbN FFmpeg) and dist\VCompress-Compatible-win64.zip (Gyan FFmpeg) — icon embedded, correct FFmpeg placed into each automatically. Requires the two binaries to exist once: put them into ffmpeg\btbn\ffmpeg.exe and ffmpeg\gyan\ffmpeg.exe. Run with fast or compatible to build a single variant.

Build just an unpacked portable folder (no zip, current ffmpeg\bin\):

npm run build:win
node_modules\rcedit\bin\rcedit-x64.exe dist\win-unpacked\VCompress.exe --set-icon build\icon.ico

(The second line embeds the app icon into the .exe so Explorer shows it — electron-builder's own icon step is disabled to avoid its winCodeSign download.)

The output lands in dist\ (an unpacked portable folder with VCompress.exe).

Requirements

• Windows 10/11
• Node.js (setup.bat installs it via winget if missing) — only for running from source
• FFmpeg binary — bundled in each release. Compatible uses the gyan.dev full build for broader old-driver support. Fast uses a fixed BtbN build and requires NVIDIA driver 610.00+ for NVENC. For source builds, put ffmpeg.exe into ffmpeg/bin/.

Notes

• For Discord's ~20 MB limit, pick Size = 20 and Audio = 96 kbps — the app handles the bitrate math and retries until it fits the size tolerance.
• AV1 needs a recent GPU (or libsvtav1 on CPU) — H.265 is a safer pick if you're not sure.
• Output never exceeds your target size: if the first encode lands over the limit, the app recalculates bitrate and re-encodes automatically.
• Hardware encoders have a minimum bitrate floor (~0.5 Mbps at 1080p). If your target is very small for a long video, the app warns you in the log before encoding and suggests lowering the resolution or trimming the video.
• Very aggressive targets on damaged recordings (NVIDIA App/ShadowPlay glitches) are detected and reported in the log — trim the broken part in the Clip tab for a clean result.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.