How To Compress AVI and MP4 Video Files With FFmpeg - Ubuntu/Debian

In this tutorial, we will see how to compress AVI and MP4 videos files using FFmpeg under Ubuntu or any Debian-based system. The commands given below will help you reduce size of video files ranging from 40% to 70% with a slight loss of quality.

AVI Video Compression


Via the Terminal cd to the folder containing the avi file and run this command:

ffmpeg -i input.avi -vcodec msmpeg4v2 output.avi

Replace "input.avi" with the name of your avi video. The compressed video will be created in the current folder having this name: output.avi.

MP4 Video Compression


Using the Terminal cd to the target folder and run this command:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -acodec mp2 output.mp4

Replace "input.mp4" with the name of your mp4 video. The compressed video will be saved in the current folder having this name: output.mp4.

That's it!