How to resize video files for YouTube for free

Posted on February 20, 2008 at 6:43 am

The title of this post is slightly misleading as I’m going to be talking about how you can resize videos for YouTube or for ANY other purpose, such as posting to a blog or website. However, since most people are looking for ways to resize videos so that they can put it on YouTube or to resize a YouTube video they have already downloaded, I figured I would mention it!

Ok, so you need to resize a large video into a smaller resolution or take a smaller video and enlarge it? There are currently no default tools built into Windows that you can use to resize videos. You can use Windows Movie Maker to edit videos and add transitions, etc, but not to change the actual video resolution.

If you do a search for RESIZE VIDEOS in Google, you’ll get a list of a bunch of commercial applications that you would have to shell out cash for! So if you’re lucky enough to have run across this post, I’ll show you a free way to resize videos quickly and easily.

VirtualDub is a free video capture software and video processing software. It has many of the video editing features that you would find in Adobe Premiere, but it is streamlined for performing operations on video very fast. It also has batch-processing capabilities for processing large number of video files.

You can do a TON of stuff with VirtualDub, including add special effects to your videos such as blurs, black and white, flipping, and lots more. However, we’ll only going to go over how you can use it to resize your videos (from YouTube or wherever!).

First download VirtualDub and extract it to a folder on your hard drive. VirtualDub does not require any installation, it simply runs directly via an EXE! That means it doesn’t mess around with your registry or anything else in Windows.

Once installed, launch the program by clicking on the VirtualDub icon. You’ll get a blank screen with some controls across the bottom. Now I’m assuming you already have your video that you would like to resize, so to get going, click on File and choose Open Video file.

Browse to the location of your video and open it. You’ll now see your video appear twice in the main window. This is because the left one is considered your original and the right one is your “processed” or altered version. When you apply a filter to your video, the right one updates and you can watch both at the same time! Cool!

Right now they are both the same since nothing has been done. Ok, so now that the video is imported, go to Video and click on Filters.

Click on the Add button at the right and scroll down till you see resize.

Click Ok and you’ll now be brought to the resize filter options. Do not be intimidated by this screen if you’ve never heard of most of things listed, I don’t either! What you’re interested in is the top section where you choose a new size. You can either choose an absolute size and type that in manually if you like, or you can specify a size relative to the current size.

Go ahead and choose how you want to resize your video. If you know you want it to be 640×480, then click on Absolute and type that in yourself, otherwise choose Relative. I’m making mine 50% smaller. There are a bunch of other options listed, such as adding a frame, or changing the aspect ratio of the video, but you can just leave that all the same if you just want to resize. Click Ok and then Ok again.

You should now see your original video on the left and your processed video on the right, in my case, half the size!

Now to save your newly resized video, click on File and choose Save As AVI. And that’s it! Go ahead and play your video and you should have it in the smaller or larger resolution! Easy as that! Have a question, post a comment! Enjoy!

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15 Responses to “How to resize video files for YouTube for free”

J.P. said on : February 28th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

When I put the address below in by “file name” I received a “ASF files not supported” pop up.

“C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\My Videos\HorseWelcome_0001.wmv”

What am i doing wrong. Thank you.

Rick said on : March 15th, 2008 at 2:39 pm

I tried following your instructions … opened a video file 640 x 480(69 MB) it opened on both panes .. I added the resize filter and put in 50 x 50 in % resize options.
The right pane did resize to smaller video (so assume what I did was correct)
But when I carry out the next step … File >Save As AVI it does save OK, but new smaller video is much larger file size than original ??
i.e my original was 69 Mb and new file created is now 429 MB ? it does show as 320 x 240 … have retried it on several files, result is resized file is always much bigger file size ??

akishore said on : March 15th, 2008 at 5:29 pm

Hi Rick,

You’re right, the file is much larger when you resize the video using Virtual Dub. You can make the video smaller by using the filter and also turning on compression. I believe the option is under Tools and then Compression.

Thanks,

Aseem

Xiao said on : March 20th, 2008 at 1:25 am

thank you very much for this tutorial! It is very helpful and clear!

sarah and alyssa said on : March 22nd, 2008 at 8:35 pm

when we try to resize it, it wont work for some reason.
we need help.
can you help up?

Weelian said on : March 29th, 2008 at 8:27 am

A very good step by step instruction, but you missed out on the Video Compression and Audio Compression steps. VirtualDub also doesn’t take ASF,WMV, RealMedia and MOV files. To ensure that you have all the Codecs, install and codec pack like Klite Codecs or Storm Codecs. Remember, make sure your target playback computer or whoever receives your compressed file has the same codecs installed, otherwise they won’t be able to read the file despite the AVI container.

To access the Video Compression, go to Tools - Compression and choose the appropriate compressor. My favorite is Xvid at Home or HiDef Settings. For Audio Compression - choose Audio - Full Processing, then choose Audio again and then Compressor and choose a codec like MP3 or Microsoft ADPCM with the appropriate bit rate. Once you have done that then save as AVI. You should have a nice and compact file then.

Certain Codecs like Microsoft DV and Panasonic DV will only accept video sizes of 720*576(PAL) and 720*480(NTSC) so if you resized it than sized other than that for DV codecs, it won’t output.

minky said on : April 16th, 2008 at 2:58 am

thnx

Lloyd said on : May 7th, 2008 at 8:49 pm

I really love this! Thanks for introducing this application and also for the comprehensive tutorial. God bless you.

ron said on : May 13th, 2008 at 2:09 am

the output is much larger than the original file!…this thing is not working even if you tick the compression thing!!!!

Rick said on : May 13th, 2008 at 10:41 am

I had the same issue, but as long as you selct the codec type it worked OK … initially files were larger

lynne said on : June 5th, 2008 at 7:28 am

Thank you so much for this, you really helped me!

Don said on : June 18th, 2008 at 5:02 pm

Ive been trying to take the video’s off of my sony handycam DVD, and place them on my website. I recently brought a video converter and converted my video files to MPEG,and AVI but when i try to open them up with VirtualDub, it tells me “MPEG Import Filter: pack at position 3: marker bit not set; possible MPEG-2 stream” what am i doing wrong?

weelian said on : June 18th, 2008 at 6:28 pm

Hi Don, you are not doing anything wrong. The current versions of VirtualDub cannot read MPEG2 files natively. MPEG2 is the standard file format that is used to encode video on DVDs. If you wish to use VirtualDub to open the MPEG2 based video, you will need to use the modified version of VirtualDub (based on 1.6.19) available at this link

http://fcchandler.home.comcast.....er/stable/

http://fcchandler.home.comcast.....-MPEG2.zip

Mike said on : June 22nd, 2008 at 6:45 pm

for any of you who are getting much larger videos than you are starting with, click Video and make sure direct stream copy is selected. If it is not VirtualDub will save the decompressed video hence the larger file size.

Elijah said on : July 7th, 2008 at 11:47 am

I recorded a video using Camtasia. When I try to open a video file, I go to the place it was, and it dousn’t show up? What am I doing wrong? I want to resize it so I could post on Youtube!