When filing issues for runs we must record videos. Oftentimes, these videos exceed the 10MB allotted per file on the Testlio platform. To get around this we must decrease the size of the file, while also ensuring that the quality is not dramatically decreased. Here are some tips on how to accomplish that.
Good Practices
Ensure there is no audio unless you are giving verbal instruction.
Make sure the text in the video is still legible.
It is often easier to change the settings of the recording software you are using to get the initial recording compared to compressing it later.
Example: Decreasing resolution or bitrate in the screen recording settings
Keep videos as concise as possible to limit the file size. Don’t record anything that is not necessary for the developer.
Example Tool
The open-source software Handbrake can be used to compress videos to small file sizes while retaining high quality.
Download and Install Handbrake.
When you open the software it looks like this:
You can either open your source file by clicking Open Source and navigating to the file or just drop your source file anywhere on the app.
Generally, the first step would be to remove (if not necessary) or compress audio (if necessary for the issue report).
To remove the audio, click Audio and switch all tracks to None.
To compress the audio to a fraction of its initial size, set Mixdown to Mono and the Bitrate to a low number such as 56.
Turn up the video compression. The easiest way to adjust this is by turning up the Rate Factor (RF) under Video. The default value is 22. Anything below RF 28.5 still yields very good quality. It isn't recommended to set a select an RF above 31 as the quality will rapidly decrease with higher values.
Another way to reduce the video size without degrading the quality much is to reduce the frame rate. By default, a recording from your cell phone camera will have 30 frames per second. We can reduce this to 15 frames per second without much of a visible change.
Under Dimensions, change the video resolution to reduce the file size. Most cellphone camera recordings will be in Full HD, which is 1920 × 1080 pixels. It's often better to reduce the dimensions of videos to 1280 × 720 or 800 × 450 pixels. The change in resolution will have a dramatic effect on the file size and the loss in quality is often negligible. Before adjusting the dimension make sure Keep Aspect Ratio is checked and Anamorphic is set to Off.
After adjusting the settings, click Start and your video is transcoded.
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