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!

[tags]resize video, resize a video, how to resize a video, resizing videos, resize youtube video[/tags]

» Filed Under Computer Tips

Comments

55 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!

Aaron said on : July 19th, 2008 at 1:20 pm

Initially, my 177MB 640×480 video turned into a 1.08GB 320×240 video. Then I played with compression settings and go it down to 8MB. Thanks for the tips!

erl said on : July 22nd, 2008 at 10:58 am

Hi! when I open my video file into the VirtualDub, I saw a single view instead of two which is original and alter..how do I make this to reasize so I can post this to youtube? help me plssss….

weelian said on : July 22nd, 2008 at 6:21 pm

Reply to erl.

Did you maximize the VirtualDub window? One possible reason is that your video is so big that it occupies the entire window of VirtualDub. You can manually resize the display by right mouse clicking the video and a window with size display and aspect ratio options will appear. Or you can grab the corner edge of the video window and manually resize.

And since both videos before you add the resize filters will be so big till they occupy the whole screen, you have to resize your display output video as well.

Another solution is to set your windows display options to the highest resolution possible so that it can display both your input and output video at the same time.

AJ said on : July 26th, 2008 at 7:29 am

I recently downloaded some videos from YouTube using real player. Every video I come accross on the internet, a download button above the video will be shown. I downloaded them. When I try to open the videos using virtual dub to resize it, it says it cannot detect the file. I tried playing it using real player and it works perfectly fine. I don’t know what type of videos they are, but when I checked them by right-clicking the file and read the propeties, some said that the type of file is 3GPP content and some says Flash Video. Please help me on how to resize those videos as I want to put them on my Cell Phone.

weelian said on : July 27th, 2008 at 11:07 am

Reply to AJ,

Try this site to download and convert the files on the fly.

http://www.vixy.net/

Kirk said on : August 21st, 2008 at 1:29 pm

Hello there. I have used your tutorial and it helped me so many times. However, I was unable to thank you. So here I am. Thank you very much!

As for the other video files not supported by Virtual Dub, I would recommend that you convert the video file first to something compatible (i.e.: from Mpeg-4 to avi). I’m using Total Video Converter and I also got it for free. For questions, leave me a message on my website.

Kirk said on : August 21st, 2008 at 1:33 pm

Response to AJ:

Virtual dub can’t open your newly downloaded file from Youtube since it’s in “flv” file format. As comment #20 from weelian suggested, try downloading using an online tool from http://www.vixy.net and your Youtube file may be saved and converted to some distinguished file format like avi or mp4 (for your ipod).

Since you have already downloaded stuffs, try my suggestion on comment # 21.

norbert said on : September 7th, 2008 at 11:20 pm

Hi, i tried to download the software and i have already extracted it, but when i run it i get a pop up saying this is not a valid winn32 file.. can you please help me.

Thanks

Kev said on : October 3rd, 2008 at 3:50 pm

bah, I just resized a video down to 320×240 and it’s size is now 36.1GB… ???

weelian said on : October 4th, 2008 at 8:56 pm

@Kev

Hi Kev, you didn’t set your video codec settings that’s why the video is so huge in size. Read my comment number 6 for more details.

BujiKan said on : November 2nd, 2008 at 4:15 am

Hey guys I went to the Compression option under video I didnt see the xvid or hidef options I only saw things like Cinepak Codec, Divx Codec and Divx Decoder, Intel Indio Video, Intel IYUV, Microsoft H.261 Video Codec, Microsoft RLE, Microsoft Video 1 and Sony DV software Codec. Which would be appropriate for my file?

BujiKan said on : November 2nd, 2008 at 4:44 am

Ok guys so I figured I’d use either Microsoft Video 1, INTEL IYUV codec or intel INDIO for my Video Compression. The first two say there are no restrictions while INDio says width and height must be a multiple of four. In order to make my video smaller then before should I change the quality underneath from 100 as well as the kilobites and frames below that option? For Audio I intend on using ADPCM. My original vido size is 833MB and I want to bring that down in order to post on myspace and You tube. Please help whenever anyone has a chance thank you all.

Tomlincs said on : December 28th, 2008 at 5:31 pm

Hi,
When I brought up the video for resizing, it came up with the message ‘Some warnings were issued during the previous operation’ These were listed as below. The original video plays ok in Windows Media Player (everything stays in sync and the piece ends as it should), but when I upload it on to Youtube, the video plays fast and is out of sync with the audio. The video piece ends around 30 seconds too early, chopping the end of the sound off. Very strange! Is there any way of resolving this with Virtualdub?

[!] MPEG: Anachronistic or discontinuous timestamp found in video stream 0 at
byte position 1064408, from 399633 to 399553. This may indicate an
improper join.

[!] MPEG: Anachronistic or discontinuous timestamp found in video stream 0 at
byte position 1949852, from 695810 to 816617. This may indicate an
improper join.

[!] MPEG: Anachronistic or discontinuous timestamp found in video stream 0 at
byte position 2005628, from 816617 to 702888. This may indicate an
improper join.

[!] MPEG: Anachronistic or discontinuous timestamp found in video stream 0 at
byte position 2028868, from 702888 to 832923. This may indicate an
improper join.

friar said on : January 1st, 2009 at 4:30 pm

as J.P. said on : February 28th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
I am having the same problem attempting to open a WMV file

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

What am i doing wrong. Thank you.

weelian said on : January 20th, 2009 at 6:42 pm

VirtualDub does not support ASF or WMV files and as for the synchronization problem, you can try enabling Video Frame rate control under Video – Framerate, use the setting “Change so video and audio duration match” and also force convert the frame rate that matches your original video’s frame rate or reduce the framerate down to a minimum viewable rate.

You might want to use the free MediaCoder for ASF, WMV and even RealMedia files.

pleasekitty said on : January 25th, 2009 at 1:07 am

omg this is awesome! thank you so much! Love it

coyote said on : January 28th, 2009 at 7:33 pm

your thread is the first information i’ve found on this subject that’s any help at all. wonderful!!! thank you!!!

so i’ve been playing with this all day long but i’m still frustrated…

i’m starting with 640×480 avi video files that come out of the camera at around 1 Meg per second (ie: 10 second video is 10 megs).

if i resize them to 320×240 using “MS Video 1″ compression at 85 percent, i end up with 10 second videos that are still over 3 megs in size.

if i use any more compression than that, they’re almost un-watchable.

yet i often see even higher-quality videos that are 320×240 and only running a half meg per second.

what am i still doing wrong? please help!

weelian said on : February 6th, 2009 at 7:26 pm

@Coyote

You might want to use a different codec like Indeo or Cinepak if you want universal compatibility. MS Video 1 codec is considered obsolete. If you want the best of compression and size ratios, try Xvid. But you must download the Xvid codec and anyone receiving the video must have the Xvid codec as well. Just google “Xvid Codec” and you should be able to find it.

xjarcher said on : April 6th, 2009 at 6:10 am

I followed the directions and when I attempt to select a video to resize the dialog box says no matching files are present. I know there are many there. What am I missing? I have Vista, if that matters.

Annie said on : April 9th, 2009 at 7:20 am

Whenever I save the video after resizing it, the colours become false coloured. Is it just my video or did I do something wrong?

PK said on : May 4th, 2009 at 3:42 pm

Hi,

Thank you for the application. The tutorial is clear, however like several users, I’m having the same problem with file size after resizing. I’ve tried applying Indeo and Cinepak codec, but it doesn’t seem to work. My 124MB file increase to over 558MB after resize!! Most photo hosting sites have a 100MB upload limit. This is the reason why I had to resize my video. Any help and suggestions will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
PK

Ruby said on : May 8th, 2009 at 4:32 am

It works, I can resize my video! Very good instructions and thanks a lot too! I recommend this website

Lisa said on : May 18th, 2009 at 12:00 pm

I cant save the new resized video, it states that its being used by another program or process, which it is not!

Marlene said on : June 12th, 2009 at 3:17 pm

Hi, I’ve followed the instruction step by step, however the quality of the video is really really bad after being resized! The original video was 120MB and I needed to resize it to 20MG… As I was going smaller I thought the quality would have not changed??? Can you explain?

Thank you!
Marlene

mo said on : June 14th, 2009 at 8:55 am

hi there it says my mpeg-1 video stream contains an invalid frame rate?

what can i do fix this problem thanks

Miss Kim said on : July 17th, 2009 at 2:46 pm

Hi there! I am trying to email an audition video and cannot send it as an attachment (through AOL) because it is 182 KB. I tried to resize it through VirtualDub but the the video became distorted when it got to about 14 or 16 KB. Any advice on what to try next?

Thank you,
God Bless

Miss Kim

Dave said on : July 19th, 2009 at 2:41 pm

Hi, i have a video file that i’ve been trying to re-size. Its something like 532×320 i think. I want to size it so i can burn it to a dvd and watch through player on 43′ plasma screen. i’ve tried all sorts of sizes, including 720×576, but this doesn’t quite seem to fit. It has black bars down left and right sides. Seems wierd but 720×540 fills the screen better. What is the exact size i need to change it to as these black bars can get quite annoying, or is there some setting i’m not putting virtualdub on right. Any help?
Thanks
Dave

Sam said on : August 9th, 2009 at 1:30 am

Hello. My Kodak M753 Only records in MOV format and VirtualDub doesnt seem to acknowledge the format. Any help at all would be great. I’m desperate.

Carol Vorhis said on : September 17th, 2009 at 12:02 pm

I’ve downloaded some movie files from a website, they are all avi files. When I burn a DVD and play them on my TV I get a narrow letterbox image which uses about one third of my TV screen. I want a bigger image, so I tried to use VirtualDub 1.9.5 to increase the size of the image. If I double the size I get a distorted image and stuttering audio.

Anything less than doubling yields an image about the same size as the original, good quality but still a small image. What am I doing wrong? I have used the following settings for the resize filter; relative 160 x 290.204, Aspect ratio 4:3, filter mode precise cubic, Framing = Do not letterbox or crop, Sizing = multiples of 2. I have tried to vary these settings but I still can’t get a good result.

Diana said on : October 26th, 2009 at 12:18 am

My camera creates avi files and I need to at least get the video down to 10MB but nothing worked! Can you please give me tips?

Ray Joyce said on : November 4th, 2009 at 8:50 am

Thank you, thank you, thank you. This was awesome. Well written, great information which make it easy to follow and accomplished in a few minutes.

Rick said on : November 25th, 2009 at 3:46 am

Tips …. I made a comment in #2 about saved files being larger.
The answ correctly pointed out was to use compression.
Took me a while to find what suits me … I downloaded the DIVX codec (free) ver 6.8.5 and use that set to high quality … but quality is adjustable if you need smaller files (larger the target quantizer value the lower the quality)
video >compression> DIVX 6.8.5(2 logical cpu)>configure>target quantizer.

I also installed the LAME3 audio codec (free) as then that allows me to get optimum MP3 compression.
Audio > compression > LAME3> 128kb ABR Stereo

Though you could select much lower audio quality, the above is CD quality.

Once you have the settings the way you want then … save them – File > Save Processing Settings
Then each time you rum up VirtualDub first step is to load settings and then all your setup is done for you.
File > Load Processing settings.

This also loads any filter settings …

so I have different settings files saved for different jobs.

vang said on : November 28th, 2009 at 11:52 pm

Hi, thanks for the free image resizing program, however, I tried it but it didn’t work! I resized it down to 50%, but the file size was bigger than the original one. What can I do? Thanks

Rick said on : November 30th, 2009 at 7:17 am

>”Rick said on : November 25th, 2009 at 3:46 am

Tips …. I made a comment in #2 about saved files being larger.
The answ correctly pointed out was to use compression.

>

bernardwan said on : December 19th, 2009 at 9:16 am

i tried to resize the video using 50% ratio…the video is resize to half the quality, but the file size is 5 times bigger then the original video..

what am I doing wrong?

I follow the instruction step by step….

Rick said on : December 19th, 2009 at 2:23 pm

You are not following the steps explained … I’ll go through them one at a time …. load file, do what you want to manipulate the file … then you need to set Video compression … or it will use uncompressed, select a codec …i.e for DivX

video / compression / divx 6.8.5
now set quality … click about then set quality 0 to 10
Then quantizer … higher number = lower quality (more compression)

Now set Audio codec
I have installed the free (and best around) LAME MP3 codec

so I use following steps:
First set compression …. Audio / full processing mode
then choose codec
Audio / Compression / LAME MP3
Then form right hand window select bit rate, I want high quality so I select:
1600Hz, 128kbs, ABR stereo, 16 kbs

Now you have set the output settings, you need to save the file with these settings applied … so you use File / save as AVI (or press F7)
Having tweaked and got the settings to what you want … including any filters applied … you can save all these settings as a single profile:
File / Save Processing Settings

Then next time when you want to do the same start VirtualDub and first step after loading file is to load processing settings … saves all the messing about with codecs etc. if you want the same output type each time.

you can of course choose which audio & video codec to use.

I downloaded DivX pro and use that for video and downloaded the LAME codec pack ….

Daddy O said on : January 2nd, 2010 at 5:35 pm

Excelente tutorial I been suffering trying to deal with the overstreched videos, no more ! Thx

Kevin said on : January 7th, 2010 at 4:30 am

I just want to ask if this editing tool can recognize MP4 format?

Mark said on : January 23rd, 2010 at 4:41 am

Thanks for the help! Was looking for a way to resize YouTube videos for a while.

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