The honest trade
Everything here runs on FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly in your browser. The gain: your video never leaves your device — no upload queue, no size cap, no server ever seeing a personal recording. The cost, stated plainly: one CPU core re-encodes at roughly the clip's own length. For the clips people actually convert — a MOV that won't play on Windows, a MKV a TV refuses, a WhatsApp-bound AVI — that is minutes, not hours.
Details that decide whether it plays
The MP4s written here use H.264 with yuv420p pixels, even dimensions and faststart —
the four unglamorous details that separate "plays everywhere" from "black screen in iMessage". If you only need
the file smaller rather than a different format, Compress Video presets the same
engine for size; if you only need part of the clip, trim it losslessly first.