Measurement · 3 min read
How do you shrink a video on a Mac without an extra app?
By exporting it at a lower resolution, in QuickTime Player with File > Export As or in Terminal with avconvert. On October 19, 2026, a 30-second screen recording from a MacBook Pro got 63.0% smaller this way at 1080p in HEVC, and 47.9% smaller at 1080p in H.264.
How much does each preset save?
It depends on the content: for the recording with a lot of movement, HEVC at 1080p saved 63.0% on the MacBook Pro on October 19, 2026, for the recording with the animation only 29.5%, where H.264 at 1080p did better, saving 44.9%. At 720p, both recordings got about 60% smaller.
In this measurement, HEVC saved less than H.264 for the animation and more for the scrolling text.
| avconvert preset | Scrolling text | Animation |
|---|---|---|
| Original | 97.47 MB | 8.45 MB |
| PresetHEVC1920x1080 | 36.08 MB (−63.0%) | 5.95 MB (−29.5%) |
| Preset1920x1080 (H.264) | 50.75 MB (−47.9%) | 4.66 MB (−44.9%) |
| Preset1280x720 (H.264) | 39.76 MB (−59.2%) | 3.32 MB (−60.7%) |
| PresetHEVCHighestQuality | 132.41 MB (+35.9%) | 16.23 MB (+92.1%) |
In parentheses the difference against the original, where plus means larger.
Which preset makes a video larger?
The highest-quality HEVC preset: it kept the full resolution and made both recordings larger on the MacBook Pro on October 19, 2026, the scrolling one by 35.9% and the animated one by 92.1%. To save space, pick a lower resolution.
What should you watch for with a video where nothing moves?
Check the length: a 30-second recording with nothing moving came out of avconvert only 2.99 seconds long with both HEVC presets in the measurement on October 19, 2026 on the MacBook Pro, and 5.58 seconds long with both H.264 presets. The recording averaged 0.7 frames per second; with files like that, check the duration after exporting.
What does QuickTime Player offer?
QuickTime Player exports with File > Export As at 4K, 1080p, 720p and 480p, and at 4K and 1080p you can choose Smaller File Size for HEVC or Greater Compatibility for H.264 (QuickTime Player User Guide, checked October 19, 2026). Only avconvert in Terminal was measured on the MacBook Pro on October 19, 2026, not QuickTime Player.
How was this measured?
The measurement covers three 30-second screen recordings from October 19, 2026, made on the built-in Liquid Retina XDR display of a MacBook Pro with M5 Pro running macOS 27.0.1, see How much storage does a Mac screen recording take?.
- Originals: H.264 at 4096 × 2570 pixels; scrolling text 97.47 MB, animation 8.45 MB, nothing moving 0.32 MB.
- Conversion:
avconvert -s <original> -p <preset> -o <output>with the four presets in the table, on the same Mac (presets as listed byavconvert --helpandman avconverton macOS 27.0.1, checked October 19, 2026). - Analysis: file size in bytes and duration from AVFoundation; 1 MB is 1,000,000 bytes.
Camera videos, QuickTime Player and image quality after exporting were not measured. The recordings themselves are not published.