Compress Medal.tv & ShadowPlay Clips for Discord (Under 25MB)
Your 60-second clutch is 300 MB. Discord allows 25. Here's the exact recipe that fits any highlight under the cap and still looks sharp — plus the bitrate math, the trim-first tactic, and the batch shortcut.
The 25MB recipe (copy this)
| Setting | Value | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Trim first | Highlight only (15–60s) | Cutting dead air removes 80%+ before compression starts |
| Resolution | 1280×720 | Discord recompresses anyway; 720p survives it best per megabyte |
| Codec | H.264 | Instant preview everywhere; H.265 gains nothing post-recompress |
| Quality | CRF 26–28 | Messaging tier — clean on phones, tiny files |
| Audio | AAC 96–128k | Game audio + callouts stay clear; music suffers slightly |
| Container | MP4 + faststart | Plays inline in Discord immediately |
A 60-second highlight at these settings lands around 10–20MB — comfortably under the 25MB free cap with headroom for grainy footage.
Discord video size calculator: will your clip fit 25MB?
Two questions decide whether a clip uploads: how big it will be, and what bitrate gets it under the cap. Work in either direction below — bitrate to size, or target size to the bitrate you need. It answers searches like 25mb video bitrate, video size calculator, and how big is a 60 second clip.
Bitrate needed for 25.0 MB
6.67 Mbps
Total: video 6.57 Mbps + audio 96 kbps
Comfortable
At or above the bitrate this resolution needs. Quality will hold. This resolution + codec wants about 3.00 Mbps of video.
Hitting an exact size by hand, one clip at a time?
Formatif Pro takes a target size in MB and processes the whole folder offline — per-file sizes shown before you upload anything.
The bitrate targets are for a messaging copy— they match this guide's CRF 26–28 recipe. If you also keep an archival version, expect roughly double the bitrate, or keep the original file.
The file size formula
File size is bitrate multiplied by duration. The only trick is the unit conversion: bitrate is in megabits, file size in megabytes, so divide by 8.
size (MB) = bitrate (Mbps) × seconds ÷ 8
bitrate (Mbps) = size (MB) × 8 ÷ seconds
25 MB, 60 s → 25 × 8 ÷ 60 = 3.33 Mbps total
3.33 Mbps − 0.096 Mbps audio = 3.24 Mbps video
What bitrate do you need for 25MB?
| Clip length | Total bitrate for 25MB | What that realistically supports |
|---|---|---|
| 15 seconds | 13.3 Mbps | 1080p60 holds up |
| 30 seconds | 6.7 Mbps | 720p60 or 1080p30 |
| 60 seconds | 3.3 Mbps | 720p30 — acceptable for messaging |
| 2 minutes | 1.7 Mbps | 480p; 720p starts to smear |
| 5 minutes | 0.67 Mbps | Not viable for video — trim the clip |
This is why trimming beats compressing: cutting a 5-minute clip to 30 seconds gives you 10× the bitrate budget at the same file size.
Upload limits by platform
| Platform | Limit per file | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Discord (free) | 25 MB | Applies to every upload, every server |
| Discord Nitro | 500 MB | Large uploads still get recompressed |
| 16 MB | Media cap; documents allow more | |
| Gmail | 25 MB | Larger files become Drive links |
| X / Twitter | 512 MB | Long video rules differ from clips |
| 1 GB | Varies by subreddit |
Platform limits change without notice — treat these as the numbers to verify, and use the calculator above with your own cap.
Quick Solution
Skip the commands — drop the clips folder in.
The recipe above works, but it's five settings per clip. Formatif Pro ($8.95 one-time) compresses the same way with presets instead of commands: pick Small Size (Web/Messaging) for one-click Discord-ready clips — or type 25 into Target Size (MB) and let it hit the cap exactly. Point it at your Medal or ShadowPlay folder and every clip comes out under the cap — offline, with per-file sizes shown before you upload a thing.
Why your clips are 300MB in the first place
Both recorders optimize for editing headroom, not sharing. ShadowPlay's High quality pushes tens of megabits per second at 1080p60; Medal.tv captures similarly rich 60fps footage (find yours under your Videos folder — location is customizable in each app's settings). That's correct for masters you might slow-mo or grade. It's 4–20× over Discord's 25MB free cap (higher with Nitro), so the sharing workflow is always: trim → downscale → re-encode, in that order — each step multiplies the savings.
And a warning that saves grief: trim before you compress. A 3-minute clip trimmed to a 30-second highlight is 83% smaller with zero quality tradeoff — more than any encoder setting can ever deliver. Cut first, compress second.
Exact-fit math (for the stubborn ones)
When CRF 28 still overshoots (smoke, confetti, film grain), compute the bitrate: (25 ÷ seconds × 8) − 0.1 = video Mbps. A 45-second clip: (25 ÷ 45 × 8) − 0.1 ≈ 4.3 Mbps video + 96k audio. Then two-pass encode at that rate — full method in our compression guide.
One-liner — 720p CRF 27 + faststart
ffmpeg -i clip.mp4 -vf scale=1280:720 -c:v libx264 -crf 27 -preset medium -c:a aac -b:a 96k -movflags +faststart clip-discord.mp4
Batch the whole clips folder (Windows CMD)
for %i in (*.mp4) do ffmpeg -i "%i" -vf scale=1280:720 -c:v libx264 -crf 27 -c:a aac -b:a 96k -movflags +faststart "%~ni-discord.mp4"
Grainy footage still over 25MB? Drop to 854×480 — on a phone screen inside Discord, nobody can tell, and the file halves again. For recording settings that produce smaller masters to begin with, see our OBS recording guide.
Discord clip questions, answered
What is Discord's video upload limit?
25MB free (higher with Nitro). Raw 1080p60 clips run 100–500MB — compression isn't optional.
How do I fit a Medal clip under 25MB?
Trim to the highlight, then 720p H.264 CRF 26–28 with 96k AAC. ~10–20MB per minute. Exact fits: bitrate math above.
Why are ShadowPlay clips so large?
High-bitrate masters for editing headroom — correct for masters, 4–20× over Discord's cap. Trim → downscale → re-encode.
H.264 or H.265 for Discord?
H.264 always — instant preview everywhere, and H.265's savings die in Discord's recompress.
Does Discord reduce quality?
Yes, everything is recompressed. Upload the sharpest sub-25MB file possible — crisp 720p beats starved 1080p after their pass.
Batch compress clips?
FFmpeg loop with the fixed 720p CRF-27 recipe, or a saved 'Discord 25MB' batch recipe with per-file sizes. Grainy clips may need 480p.
What bitrate do I need for a 25MB video?
25 × 8 ÷ seconds. In 60s that's 3.33 Mbps total (~3.24 Mbps video after 96k audio); in 30s, 6.67 Mbps; in 15s, 13.3 Mbps.
How do I calculate video file size from bitrate?
Bitrate (Mbps) × seconds ÷ 8 = megabytes. A 60-second clip at 8 Mbps is 60MB. Include audio in the total: 8 Mbps video + 128 kbps audio = 8.128 Mbps.
Keep learning
Clip it. Shrink it. Post it.
Formatif Pro ($8.95 one-time) and Formatif AI ($12.95 one-time) handle video, image, and audio conversion offline — with batch workflows, no file size limits, and a 3-day free trial.
The recipe and commands above are complete and free forever — pick whichever method fits your clip count.
Written by
Founder of Formatif, a local-first offline media processing suite for Windows and Linux. Hadi writes about video, image, and audio formats, compression, and privacy-first desktop workflows.