Compress Video Without Losing Quality

Why this matters

Blind bitrate numbers (throw 4 Mbps at everything) waste space on easy scenes and crush hard ones. Quality-targeted encoding spends bits where the image needs them.

Targeting a VMAF score instead of a bitrate produces predictable quality at the minimum size — the standard approach for archives and delivery.

How it works

Pick a quality target (CRF 23 or VMAF 93), submit the master, and read the resulting size and score. Adjust the target up or down and re-run.

Submit a job with an input URL (S3, GCS or HTTPS), poll the job URL, and download the rendered output. No GPU, no queues, no ffmpeg builds to babysit.

Code

import requests, time

API = "https://api.mlslabs.io/v1/encode/jobs"
headers = {"X-API-Key": "YOUR_API_KEY"}
payload = {"input": "s3://bucket/master.mov", "codec": "h264", "crf": 23}

resp = requests.post(API, json=payload, headers=headers)
job = resp.json()
while job["status"] not in ("succeeded", "failed"):
    time.sleep(3)
    job = requests.get(job["url"], headers=headers).json()

print("Output:", job["output_url"])

Pro tips

• Keep the original master; compression is for delivery, not preservation.
• Use VMAF mode when you have a quality SLA; CRF when you want one knob.
• Compare the same scene side by side before committing to a target.

Try quality-targeted encoding in Postman.