If you’ve recorded a video and want to send a large video file to friends or family, this can be a little more difficult than you thought.
Video files can get very large and very fast. There are many options for sending other types of large files, but video files are different. These methods may work for small video files, but not for large ones.
How to Email Large Videos
Sending a large video via email will work, but only up to a point. Check the size of the video you recorded and determine if it meets the limits of your email.
Email sending limits for the most common email services:
- Gmail: 25MB
- Yahoo: 25MB
- Outlook.com: 34MB
- iCloud Mail: 20 MB
- ProtonMail: 25 MB
- Zoho Mail: 20 MB
You can expand this limit slightly by compressing the video file.
- To do this, right-click the file, select Send To, and select the Compressed (zip) folder.
In this example, when compressing a video of 223,765 KB, the file was reduced to only 223,037 KB. This will be the case with many videos, depending on the video file format.
If you find this to be the case with your large video file, you have one last option for emailing. You can upload the file to a cloud service and email the link to the recipient.
How to Send Large Videos Using Cloud Services
Most cloud storage services allow you to upload files that are much larger than the limits for sending files by email.
Upload the video file to your cloud storage account. If the file is large, it may take several minutes. Once downloaded, you can right click on the file and get the send link in an email.
If you use Google Drive and Gmail, Gmail will actually prompt you to upload to Google Drive if you try to attach a file that is larger than the upload limit.
The limits for cloud sharing are greater than for email, but not limitless. Free storage limits for each of the most popular cloud storage services:
- Google Drive: 15GB
- IDrive: 5GB
- Dropbox: 2GB
- Microsoft OneDrive: 5 GB
- Apple iCloud Drive: 5 GB
If your video files are less than this limit and you have free space on your account, you can upload the entire file to share with anyone.
How to send large videos using messaging apps
If you don’t have a cloud storage account, or if you prefer a more convenient way to send videos to friends or family, you always have the option to send videos using your favorite messaging app.
One example is Skype, where you are allowed to share a file with a recipient up to 300MB in size.
It’s much easier than uploading to your cloud storage account first or even writing an email to send the file. As long as your video doesn’t exceed the limits of the messaging app, you’re done.
File transfer limits of the most popular messaging apps:
- WhatsApp: 16MB
- Snapchat: 2.5MB
- WeChat: 25MB
- Telegram: 25 MB
- Facebook Messenger: 25 MB
- Signal: 300 KB
- Google Hangouts: 200 MB
- Discord: 8MB
- Google Allo: 25MB
- iMessage: 220MB
Stream very large video files to friends
All of the above options work fine if your video file is up to 15GB in size, but what if you’re trying to send a movie length video? None of the options listed so far have worked. But you’re not entirely lucky.
The last resort for sending very large video files is to host the video file on a video streaming service and make it private only to the recipients who want to view the video. YouTube is actually one of the best services you can use to privately share very large videos with your friends.
Most people know YouTube as a platform for delivering content to millions of people on the Internet, but many don’t realize that you can upload videos to YouTube and share privately with just a few people.
- To do this, create an account if you don’t already have one.
- After logging in, select the VCR icon next to your profile picture. Select “Download Video” from the drop-down menu.
- On the first screen, you can drag the video file to the download area or click the Download button and navigate to the video storage location on your computer.
YouTube compresses videos well during the download process. Even large files are loaded quite quickly.
- On the next screen, you can give the video title and description.
- Scroll down and click Next twice to go to the Visibility window in the Video Download Wizard.
- In the viewport, select the Publish Now drop-down list and select Private.
- Scroll down the window and select Finish when finished.
- From the list of your videos on the video screen, select a title to open the video details screen.
- Click the three dots next to the Save button in the upper-right corner and select Share.
- A window will open where you can list all the emails of the people you want to privately share the video with.
- These people will receive an invitation email that includes a link where they can stream the private video you have shared with them.
The limit on the size of the uploaded video is quite large. You can upload 128GB video or 12 hours, whichever is less.
YouTube isn’t the only show in town when it comes to streaming private videos either.
- Facebook: You can upload videos up to 1.75GB in size and use the privacy dropdown in your post. to select specific friends.
- Vimeo: Upload a video up to 500MB and share the video privately using your password and upload link.
- Twitch: Upload videos up to 10GB and uncheck Share My Activity to keep the stream private.
- Dailymotion: Upload up to 60 minutes of video and make it private. You can share the link to the video using the URL (no password required, so technically it’s still public).
- Primcast: You can upload and store your videos to Primcast and then embed them into streaming from your own website.
- Wistia: You can upload videos up to 8GB in size to Wistia, and then add a list of “viewers” ??who can view the video.
All of these services are free and are a great way to share large videos with people without worrying about how you’re going to transfer such large files
Share large videos on your hosting server
Of course, if you are already paying for web hosting, chances are good that your web hosting account has FTP functionality.
- Log into your web hosting account and check to see if it is there FTP details are included in many of the services available to you.
If so, you can use any FTP client to upload large videos to your own web hosting server.
- You need to set up an FTP account so that you can provide this account information. people with whom you want to share the video. To do this, go to cPanel and find the FTP Accounts tool.
- In this tool, simply create a username and password for these users.
Now, when you upload a video using an FTP client, the people you provide your account information to can use their own FTP client to connect to your web host and download a large video file.
Use this approach only if you are confident that the people you are sharing the video with understand how to use FTP clients and how to transfer files over FTP.
If not, you might want to consider other easier-to-use file transfer tools
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