"Hi, I have some AVI videos downloaded from the Internet and they are kind of big and taking up a lot of the storage space on my hard drive. I was thinking about compressing them so that I'd have more free space for other videos. How can I do that?"

AVI, short for Audio Video Interleave, is a multimedia container format developed by Microsoft to store video and audio data in one file container. It's a widely used video format which means a lot of video players can support playing AVI videos. Even the Windows Media Player would be able to play an AVI video with no problem. But due to the different video and audio codecs that are used to encode the AVI video, you might sometimes have trouble playing them with WMP. But when you have problem playing AVI videos with WMP, you can always try a third-party video player. Most of them could play an AVI video with no problem.

Usually when video and audio data are contained in an AVI file, they are less compressed than in other video formats like MOV and MPEG. So a video in AVI format is typically bigger than the same video in other formats. If you want to compress AVI file to a smaller size, you are going to need an AVI video compressor. And there are two ways to do that, one is to change the parameters of the AVI video like resolution to make the AVI video smaller. The other is to compress AVI to MP4 or other formats. You can do both using a video converter. Check out the content below to see which video converter you can use to compress AVI files and how to use it to compress them.

How to compress AVI file to a smaller size with an AVI video compressor

The video compressor I'll be using in this post is Leawo Video Converter. This video converter is capable of converting video and audio files between all kinds of different formats. And you can use it to convert AVI to other format to reduce the size of the AVI video. Or you can use this program to adjust the parameters of the AVI video. Both ways could work with the help of Leawo Video Converter.

   

Here's how to use it to compress AVI file.

1. Open Leawo Video Converter. After the installation, you will find that it's integrated into a software toolkit named Prof.Media. Just open the program and then click Video Converter on the program to launch Leawo Video Converter. And then drag the AVI video you want to compress to the program. You can also click the Add Video button to import source AVI videos.

Compress AVI File

2. Click on the button that locates on the left side of the green Convert button. And you will see a popup menu with 3 buttons. Click on the Change button in the middle to enter the Profile page. If you choose to convert the AVI video to a new format, you can select a new format from the page. Or if you choose to change the parameters of the AVI to reduce its size, choose AVI as the output format. And then go back to the main interface.

Compress AVI File

3. To adjust the parameters of the output video, click on the button mentioned on Step 2 again and click on the Edit button on the following menu. And then you can change the parameters of the output video on the following page. To reduce the size of the output AVI video, you can set video parameters like resolution, Bit Rate, Frame Rate and audio parameters like Bit Rate, Sample Rate to a lower level. Users who choose to convert AVI to a new format can also adjust those parameters.

Compress AVI File

4. To start the compression, go back to the main interface and click the green Convert button. On the sidebar that follows, change the default output path if you need. And then click the Convert button from below to start the AVI compression.

Compress AVI File

How to compress AVI file online with an online video compressor

Leawo Video Converter is the best option to compress AVI files. But if you don't have much AVI videos to compress, you can also try using an online video converter to compress AVI online. There are a lot of different online video converters on the Internet. You won't get as much customizations as Leawo Video Converter but most of them are good enough for compressing AVI videos. I'll choose one online video converter to show you how to reduce AVI file size online.

  • 1. Open Aconvert's website with your browser.
  • 2. Click Choose File to add the AVI video you want to compress to the website.
  • Compress AVI online

  • 3. Click on the Target format option box to set AVI as the default output format.
  • Compress AVI online

  • 4. Click on the Options option box and then select Change size, bitrate or frame rate.
  • Compress AVI online

  • 5. Change the parameters that you think can make the output video smaller and then click Convert Now to start compressing the AVI video.
  • Compress AVI online

  • 6. When the compression is done, find the compressed AVI from the Conversion Results section from below and click on the Download button to download the compressed video.
  • Compress AVI online

If you only have a few small AVI videos to compress, then the online video converter is obviously the better choice. But you should know that you have to upload the video to the website every time you try to compress AVI videos, which could take a long time if the AVI video you are compressing is a big one. So for massive AVI video compression I think Leawo Video Converter is undoubtedly the best choice. With it you would be able to easily compress MP4 or any other videos as you like.