Compressing a file means reducing the size it occupies in memory, on an SSD disk, on a USB stick or on hard disk. Sometimes it is necessary to compress files if you want to move, for example, a video to your mobile phone or if you need to send a document or a series of images via email quickly.
Resizing a file also allows you to speed up transfers and to make more space on a disk or in a memory like that of smartphones and small laptops.
Compression of files is a very broad topic, which also depends a lot on the format in which a file is saved.
We have therefore already described the differences between video file formats and between major audio file formats.
In this article, instead of talking about conversion between file formats, we see instead the best ways to compress large files of the most common types: PDF, video, MP3, JPG and other types of images .
Obviously, the goal is to compress a file without losing its quality, therefore without a photo becoming grainy, without a PDF becoming less readable, without the video being viewed badly and without the music feeling worse .
1) Compress videos
If you have a big video or anyway you want to compress it to send it to friends on Whatsapp or to share it more quickly on Facebook or on another sharing site there are many tools and we have already seen in another article the best programs to compress videos and movies on PC .
Alternatively we can also use a free web application, without downloading programs, such as Compressify, which compresses videos up to 60%
Compressify converts any video up to 8 MB in size into Google's WebM format, the file format designed for videos on the Internet.
This is the ideal solution to compress videos to upload them to Facebook without losing quality.
Alternatively, you can also use the ClipChamp website which works to compress MP4, AVI, WebM, WMV, MOV
2) Compress images and photos
Also for this goal there are some
Sometimes it is useless to send or share photos at the maximum resolution of the shot with a 13 Megapixel camera or more and instead it is better to reduce them a bit using tools, programs and websites to Compress PNG, JPG and GIF images and optimize them without losing quality .
Among these, the CompressNow site is excellent, compressing GIF, JPEG and PNG files, and allowing you to check the final size of the files.
This is also among the few online image compression tools for converting multiple files simultaneously.
To use the site, simply drag and drop the images on the browser panel or use the Upload button.
3) Compress PDF
To reduce the size of too large PDF documents, the first tool that comes out in all searches is the SmallPDF site, reported in another article as one of the best solutions to compress PDF .
The app reduces the file to 144 dpi (dots per inch) while remaining perfectly legible and usable for any use.
The site also allows you to upload files from Dropbox and Google Drive.
4) Compress MP3 music
The MP3 format is already compressed, but can be further reduced with other tools such as that of the MP3Smaller website where you can upload the audio file (up to 50 MB).
Compression affects audio bitrate so there may be a more or less noticeable reduction in quality depending on how you listen to music or audio recording.
Alternatively, you can use the WinMP3Packer program, very simple and effective.
Keep in mind that an MP3 is heard well by most people at a 128 kbps bitrate so if you have higher bitrate files, it may be a good idea to compress it.
5) Compress each type of file to the maximum
To reduce the size of any file you can use a ZIP archiving program, which is the format of digital file archives.
There are several programs to compress extract and open ZIP archives, RAR or other types, among which the best free is 7Zip .
Without using programs, there are also some sites for compressing, decompressing and extracting ZIP files such as Ezyzip.
On average, the reduction of the file size with the ZIP format varies between 15 and 30% compared to the original.
Finally, in another article, I had reported the magical File Optimizer program , to decrease the size of all files without losing quality and without zip
