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Trying to send an .avi file via email to a client, but it's taking an age!!! Do I need to compress the file?? First time I've done this. Using broadband but it's still not sent it after 10 minutes!! Any ideas??

mailing large files can be a pain and can time out your connection, try FTPing the file instead. If you or your client doesn't have an FTP server, try

https://www.yousendit.com/cms/liteaccount

here you send it to a secure server and the client picks it up from the server, it stays there for a certain period (no idea how long....) so they don't have to retrieve there and then.

G

Thanks for that. i initially tried to send a 2minute video, but it was taking an age. So I sent a shorter video - literally 15 seconds of video - which has gone through okay but still took a few minutes.

it depends ...

Off the top of my head I don't think tha AVI specification (by Microsoft) is a compressed format: it relies on the codec to do that. at leeast one codec (fully framed?) is either not compressed or lossless, while mjpeg is compressed.

You could try pushing it through winzip (or 7zip or whatever) and seeing what results.

The root cause is more likely to be the file size: how big is your file? If you have a copper wire telephone broadband (rather than cable, 3G, GPRS or fibre) then you will have an asymmetric link of about 8mbps in total of which about 90% is for download and about 125mbs for upload. This means that uploading a 10mb file will take about two to five minutes (ish). I send files of this size all the time via my company's Microsoft Exchange mail and it's workable. If you have larger files then your email provider may well have a limit on the file size.

I don't (obviously) know which email client you are using, but there could well be a progress dialog that will show you how much has been sent.

If your file is more than say 100mb to 1Gb then you might be better encrypting it and putting it onto a public file share solution. you might find that your browser times out or that the server has a maximum upload file size though.

Who hosts your website? put the file on a (hidden) URL: security by obscurity.

If you want to live dangerously:
install filezilla server (or use netcat if you want to be right out on the edge)
get your broadband router to port forward 21/20 (ftp)
give your ip address to your client
ask them to ftp (using a browser if they want) the file from your machine
uninstall filezilla
reinstall windows (not really, but someone will have tried to hack you, though probably unsuccessfully)

Alternatively
1. Burn to a DVD
2. Post the DVD
It will be with your client by Monday at a cost to you of about 50p. If your emails are really not sending then it'll take this long to sort it out anyway.

aporia wrote:it depends ...

Off the top of my head I don't think tha AVI spec...

You lost me here.

I would suggest uploading it to a more obscure video sharing site and sending him the link (i just can't bring myself to put anything on YouTube). That's what I used to do anyway, makes it easy for sending the same file to multiple people at different times, just send them the link.

Why not try zipping it up before sending?

Tomo wrote:Why not try zipping it up before sending?

Old school!

Lawrence wrote:

Tomo wrote:Why not try zipping it up before sending?

Old school!

It's sometimes surprising just how much space can be saved using zip.

Video formats are confusing.

When you see a video with an AVI extension (e.g. my_video.avi), that does *not* mean it is in AVI format. AVI is not a format, but is a sort of container. The video inside this container will be formatted with a codec. DivX and Xvid are good codecs that allow you to keep lots of detail in the video but permits small file sizes.

AVI is simply the file wrapper. It can be compressed or uncompressed, and the degree of compression depends on the codec used.

For email, I'd recommend DivX, MPEG-4, or H.264 compression. There are simple programs out there for download that will convert files for you.

Once done, you'll find the resulting video file much more downloadable and emailable.

Pete

Snap

Tomo wrote:Why not try zipping it up before sending?

Useless if it's already compressed (which is likely), as I understand it?

So if for instance, and excuse my complete ignorance in these matters, I upload a video to YouTube - should I do something with it first or just upload it as it comes off the camera, in .avi format-thingy-whatever it is?

YouTube re-encodes video files into its preferred format. The help pages will tell you what format it prefers, but things are quite flexible. It's just that YouTube's preferred specs will yield the best results with minimal upload time...

The same doesn't apply to sending video files via email, where you'll have to do all the media encoding ahead of time.

Pete

Thanks Pete!