Presso

A Windows utility that aggressively compresses videos to fit Discord's 10 MB upload limit (or any size you set). Built around FFmpeg 2-pass encoding with proportional-feedback bitrate convergence — instead of giving up after a few attempts, it learns from each try and homes in on the target size automatically.

Features

• Drag & drop GUI with a multi-file queue, per-item progress bars, and cancellation.
• Supports mp4, mov, mkv, webm, avi as input — output is always <name>_presso.mp4.
• Right-click → "Compress with Presso" in Explorer to compress directly into the source folder.
• Configurable target size, codec (HEVC / H.264), and output directory. Settings are persisted to %APPDATA%\Presso\config.json.

Installation

Grab the latest PressoSetup-x.y.z.exe from Releases and run it. The installer:

• places Presso under C:\Program Files\Presso\,
• registers the Compress with Presso context menu for the supported video extensions, and
• bundles its own FFmpeg/ffprobe — no separate install needed.

Usage

• Launch Presso from the Start Menu and drop video files onto the window, or
• right-click a video file in Explorer and pick Compress with Presso.

Defaults: target 10 MB, HEVC enabled, output written next to the source file. Open the Settings dialog to change any of these. The right-click flow always writes to the source folder regardless of the GUI's output-folder setting.

How the size targeting works

1. Read duration / dimensions via ffprobe.
2. Compute an initial video bitrate from target_bytes − audio_budget, divided by duration.
3. Run a 2-pass encode at that bitrate.
4. If the result is over budget, set next_bitrate = current * (target_size / actual_size) * 0.97 and retry.

This proportional feedback usually converges in 1–2 retries instead of grinding through a fixed * 0.9 decay. If five attempts still don't land it, it falls back to HEVC → H.264, then a CRF-32 last resort (size not guaranteed in CRF mode).

Building from source

Prerequisites

• Windows 10/11 (x64)
• .NET 8 SDK
• Inno Setup 6
• FFmpeg Windows 64-bit GPL shared build (e.g. BtbN/FFmpeg-Builds → ffmpeg-master-latest-win64-gpl-shared.zip). FFmpeg binaries are not committed to the repo — fetch separately and unzip into the layout below.

Layout

Presso\
├── ffmpeg\
│   └── bin\
│       ├── ffmpeg.exe
│       ├── ffprobe.exe
│       └── *.dll
├── src\Presso\...
└── installer\Presso.iss

Build

.\build.ps1

Output: installer\output\PressoSetup-x.y.z.exe.

License

The Presso application source is MIT-licensed.

The distributed installer also bundles FFmpeg binaries (compiled with --enable-gpl --enable-version3, including libx264 and libx265). Those binaries are licensed under GPLv3 and are governed by their own terms — see LICENSES/THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt and LICENSES/GPLv3.txt. Presso invokes FFmpeg only as an external process; no FFmpeg code is statically linked into Presso itself.

H.264 / HEVC are patent-encumbered formats. If you redistribute or use this commercially, check the licensing terms of the relevant patent pools (MPEG-LA, HEVC Advance, Velos Media).