Compressing size of mp4 file [closed]

Question

I'm trying to compress an mp4 file to reduce the file size. I am using a Debian box.

The file is around 701 MB. First, I tried bzip2, which compressed it down to like 700MB, then I tried lrzip with zpaq, took like 5 mins to compress, and only brought it down to like 695 MB... Am I doing something wrong?

Answer 1

mp4 (or MPEG4) is already a very compressed video format, which uses advanced coding specific for video.

You won't be able to compress it more using loseless zip algorithms like bzip. What you can do is transcode the file to lower its video quality using some kind of transcoder (such as HandBrake).