Hi All, I attended on the section about videos of Wikimania, where one of the topics was, that Wikimedia Commons needs more videos. Until now, I tried to upload a video only ones, and this was the result: * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T128826 The main reasons are * While I have experience with photography, I am a bad cinematographer; * I am not familiar with the video formats, their parameters and how can I convert between formats (keeping the quality high as much as possible). After Wikimania I decided to upload some videos I recorded during Wikimania, and I spent a day with this task without a real success. I would like to share this experience, and maybe you can give me advice. First I tried to convert my MP4 (H264+AAC) records to webm format. I started with a relatively smaller video with the size of around 200 MB. 1. I tried the https://tools.wmflabs.org/videoconvert/ tool. I logged in, started to upload the video. Uploading was very slow. After a longer time the page showed, that the upload was finished, but as soon as I wanted to move on the next step, I realized, that I had to log in again. Then I realized, that the video was uploaded only partly (probably I was logged out because of an unknown reason). I tried to convert the video, but there was no status update, how long should I wait. After one hour I reloaded the page, and the tool told me, I have to log in again. After that I saw, that I lost the session and I should start it again. After that I jumped to the next tool. 2. I tried the https://tools.wmflabs.org/video2commons/ tool. The interface is nice, my feeling was, that it was faster (but still a long time). After I uploaded the video, I chose the VP9 format (I think it provides better quality that VP8). After some minutes I received an error message: Exitcode: 1 Ok, I restarted the conversion, but in the end I got the same result. I had to choose between restart the conversion or delete the task, and finally I deleted the task. With that, I deleted the uploaded video in the same time, there was no way to change the conversion settings only. I jumped to an offline tool (because this uploading process will be even longer with larger videos). Note: none of the online conversion tools (nor the Upload Wizard on Commons!) has the option to pause the uploading process, I can only completely cancel it. It would be useful, because uploads can take hours long and meanwhile I should use my internet connection for example for a call or internet banking temporarily (both happened yesterday). 3. I tried to convert using the latest VLC video player. After I set the parameters, I clicked convert. Then the software completely crashed. I tried ones more, with the same result. 4. As a last try, I downloaded the XMedia Recode software. And after I learnt the software a little bit, I was able to convert my video. I tried with different setups, but I didn't see the really big difference with the video compressed 1/10 of the highest quality settings... I set the bitrate of the audio channel to 192 kb/s, but I have no feeling with the video channel. I am wondering what are the optimal settings (compression level without observable quality loss) based on your experience. Best, Samat