Can you e-mail me the video?

Can you e-mail me the video? 

I often get asked this question and my answer is usually ‘no – because it’s a video file and therefore too big’.

I thought it might be helpful to set out the following explanation and then suggest some solutions. The growth of Smartphones with built in cameras has seen an explosion in the number of high quality digital images we all carry around with us. Generally each of these images is around 2mb which makes for a great print or screen display.

However this growth has not been matched by a corresponding growth in e-mail capacity, mainly due to the network infrastructure. It’s a bit like if we all owned high performance V8 race cars and wanted to drive them at 150km/hour on our suburban streets.

The road system just wouldn’t cope (nor would the police!).

So if we want to e-mail these images from our Smartphones, we usually need to restrict them to three or four mb at the most so that the overall size of the e-mail is no more than 6mb (or so).

This is because many e-mail providers and especially corporate e-mail systems, restrict the size of emails that can be sent and received. This is dictated by the network infrastructure already mentioned and the size of the e-mail servers needed to store e-mails.

In Australia, the NBN promises to lift these restrictions and in effect, give every house an eight-lane highway right at their front door. So if we find it hard to send any more than a few high definition still images via e-mail, imagine how much harder it is to send video.

If one still image is 2mb, you can do the maths and work out how large a 30 second video might be that has 25 frames per second. (30 X 25 x 2mb = 1,500mb or 1.5GB!)

Now in practice there are some very smart applications that compress video files so that they’re no where near this size, but even 30 seconds of high definition video can produce a file size of 50mb or so. That’s way beyond the current capability of any e-mail program.

Camera technology has leapt way ahead of the technology we have available to send the images the camera creates.

Note: It is possible to compress a video file so that it can be e-mailed, but this will mean the file will need to be no bigger than around 6-8mb. This means the video will be very small when played (postage stamp size) and very low quality. So, what to do?

We need a system that duplicates what happens when you connect your Smartphone or camera to your computer to back-up or transfer your images and video footage to your hard drive. And we do – it’s called FTP or file transfer protocol. It’s a way of connecting one computer to another with appropriate log-on and password protection.

Using an FTP program, it’s possible to transfer any file from computer A to computer B anywhere in the world, BUT with one limitation of course. And that is that the file still has to use the same network infrastructure that limited our e-mail size earlier.

However the advantage is that because FTP doesn’t use e-mail servers and the file is not being stored and re-transmitted many times, an FTP connection can be open for as long as is needed. I’ve sent high definition video footage for TV broadcast to the US this way.

Whilst the compressed files are still quite big (200/300mb) FTP will get them there in an hour or two. If the world of FTP is too complicated (and it can be) there are a number of far more user friendly options.

Dropbox and YouSendIt These are just two of the most popular file transfer web sites that are used to send large files (video or otherwise) around the world. In effect they are huge file servers to which you upload (or FTP) your file and then send a link/notification to the person at the other end to tell them where to download it.

There can be costs involved if your file is over a certain size, but they provide an answer to the question, ‘Can you e-mail me that video?’ My answer is, ‘no, but I can send it via Dropbox or YouSendIt’.

Dropbox has the added advantage of you being able to invite as many people as you wish to access your files on-line. This is very handy for teams that work apart geographically but need to access large video files, stills, graphics etc. Proxy files One of the options available to video editors who may need to work remotely is to use proxy files.

These are much smaller versions of the master video file and are sometimes generated by the camera along with the master file. Because these are much smaller than the master, they can be sent via FTP or in some cases even by e-mail.

When the editor finishes the edit, the EDL (edit decision list) is e-mailed back to the originator and they can then use this to match or conform the master files and produce the high definition finished product. Use the postal service Snail mail can still be the best way to send video files.

The mail system is full of USB sticks, data DVDs and portable hard drives being sent across the country and around the world.

Why can’t I copy/open a DVD file?

DVDs were invented around 1995 and so the technology is over 15 years old. A lot has happened in those 15 years with how we distribute video.

Youtube was founded ten years later in 2005 and it has helped create the growth of video sharing and uploading which we’re familiar with today. If you ‘explore’ a DVD you’ll see a number of files with unusual names – VTS_01_1.VOB etc.

These are the files the DVD protocol uses to create the menus, tracks/chapters etc. The larger files will be the actual video information encoded using the MPEG compression codec.

A little known fact is that if you copy one of the ‘VOB’ files to your computer and change the suffix from ‘VOB’ to ‘mpeg’ the video file will usually play in your Quicktime player.

If you can identify the right file (and there may be quite a few, depending on the content of the DVD) this is a quick way of creating a file that can then be uploaded to Youtube or embedded into a Powerpoint presentation, for example.

Whilst DVDs are over 15 years old, they are often the best way to distribute a video file, whether it’s a feature film, documentary, etc. Everyone has access to a DVD player.

Blueray DVDs are a new development for high definition video distribution. If you want to copy (or rip) a file from a DVD without changing the file name, there are a number of programs that will do this. ‘MPEG Streamclip’ and ‘HandBrake’ are two I use.

Each of them will allow you to ‘open’ a DVD and then export the video file to a variety of other formats, depending on your end use. (Both free.) Another way of distributing video files is via a USB stick or by burning the file to a CD or DVD disc (without actually creating a DVD) CD media has a capacity of around 700mb and DVD media a capacity of around 4.6GB.

You will need to copy the file off the CD or DVD media in order to play it, as the data rate from the DVD player is not high enough. (Unlike a DVD formatted disc which has a lower data rate)

Summary:

1. You cannot e-mail video files (See Note above)

2. Use FTP or Dropbox or YouSendIt to upload to central server and then e-mail link

3. DVDs are old technology but files can be accessed and copied using above programs

4. Video will continue to grow with over85% of web files being video by 2020.