8mb.local is a self-hosted video compressor for the upload-limit problem: drop a file in, pick a target size (8 MB, 25 MB, 50 MB, 100 MB) and it re-encodes the clip to fit. It is a local answer to the 8mb.video service — the same “shrink this clip until it fits” workflow, except the video never leaves your own machine. The project pairs a FastAPI backend with a Svelte web UI, ships Docker images for amd64 and arm64, and also builds natively for Windows x64/ARM64, Apple Silicon macOS and Android.

Compression workflow

• Drag-and-drop upload with a target-size picker, so you set the budget (“under 8 MB”) instead of guessing a bitrate.
• Automatic size optimisation: if the first pass overshoots the target by more than 2%, it re-encodes with an adjusted bitrate.
• Real-time progress built from output size, time processed and wall-clock estimates, with the live FFmpeg log streamed into the page.
• Batch processing, plus a queue that shows every active job and lets you cancel one or clear the lot.
• Job history list, with original vs compressed size, the reduction achieved, codec and container per entry; auto-download is on by default.

Codecs and hardware encoding

• AV1, HEVC and H.264 output via NVIDIA NVENC, Intel Quick Sync, AMD AMF, Windows Media Foundation, Apple VideoToolbox or Linux VAAPI, with software encoding as the fallback when no GPU is usable.
• Encoder validation at startup actually initialises each encoder, so a broken driver is reported instead of silently degrading to CPU.
• Advanced options cover codec profile and tune, MP4/MKV container (with compatibility safeguards), audio bitrate, resolution caps that keep the aspect ratio, and trimming by seconds or HH:MM:SS.
• Individual codecs can be hidden from the UI in Settings when the hardware cannot encode them.

Deployment

• Docker is the recommended install: jms1717/8mblocal:latest exposes a single port (8001), CPU-only or with --gpus all plus the NVIDIA driver capabilities for NVENC; a VAAPI compose profile handles Intel and AMD on the host.
• Native Windows, Apple Silicon macOS and Android 8.0+ builds are published on GitHub Releases; the Android app compresses on the phone itself and saves to the camera roll on Android 10+.
• An Easypanel template deploys it CPU-only in one click, and the running version is exposed in the UI and at /api/version.

Licence

Not OSI open source. 8mb.local is released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0): free to use, share and adapt for non-commercial purposes with attribution, while commercial use requires a separate licence from the author. Source-available, not OSI-approved.

Alternatives

• HandBrake — GPL-licensed desktop transcoder with device presets and a target-size mode.
• FFmpeg — the command-line toolkit underneath most of these tools, with two-pass bitrate control for exact target sizes.