If you want people to watch your video, you need to send it to them conveniently. How can you send a video without losing quality? Are there ways to share long videos while keeping them crisp and high-definition?
Fortunately, there are some easy ways to send your videos without compromising quality.
Video Quality – Why Does It Matter?
As with sending any other data, sending a video to someone means sending them a file. The bigger the file, the more challenging it is. The smaller the video file, the easier it is to share.
Making a video smaller means that we lose information, which impacts the video’s quality. To retain the quality of the video, we need to optimize for resolution and frame rate.
Instead of recording your video at the highest resolution and frame rate, decide upfront what the minimum requirements will be for your video. If your video is a screen recording or instructional video, then a lower-resolution recording would suffice.
Uploading your long video to cloud-based storage is a convenient way to share longer videos. Many of these cloud storage solutions offer generous free storage, so opting for paid accounts is often unnecessary.
Here are some of the easiest ways to send long, high-quality videos.
If you want to make a screen recording and then share that video, RecordJoy is a cloud-based, online solution that works really well. It’s a web browser application, so there’s no need to download or install anything.
Head over to the RecordJoy website and sign up for their free trial. On the home page, you’ll see a few simple options to configure before starting your screen recording.
Once you’ve configured the settings, click “Start Screen Recording”. Once you’ve completed your screen recording, click “Stop Recording”. You’ll then be presented with the sharing options.
Now you can either download the video, copy the link to share, or copy the video embed code. The screen recording video is stored on their servers so you don’t have to download it. Simply copy the link and share it with the person that needs to see the video.
You can make screen recordings of up to 30 minutes long and at a resolution of 720p.
Dropbox currently offers 2GB of storage on its free plan. Once you’ve uploaded your video, you can create a link to share it. The person downloading the video does not have to have a Dropbox account to access the shared video.
Most people have a Google account and will have access to Google Drive. The free account offers up to 15GB of storage, easily accommodating high-quality longer videos. Creating a video-sharing link on Google Drive is also really simple.
Google Photos offers 15GB of free storage and is convenient if you already have a Google account. Creating a link to share a video is also easy; the person accessing the link does not have to have a Google Photos account.
OneDrive is Microsoft’s cloud storage solution. It’s designed to integrate with Microsoft365 products but works well as a standalone cloud storage solution. They only offer 5GB of storage on their free package.
Instead of offering permanent storage, some online solutions make transferring large files from one device to another easy. Solutions include Dropbox Transfer, Sync, We Transfer, and several others.
A number of these offer generous large file transfers under their free options.
Upload your video to Youtube and share the link. You can make the video private to restrict who can watch it.
If you’re within close range of the other person’s device, you can use Bluetooth to share a large video without losing quality. This solution also doesn’t require internet access.
If you want to send a large video from one Apple device to another, simply use Airdrop. It uses Bluetooth to share the file without any compression or loss of video quality.
The AVI video format uses less compression than other formats to retain video quality while producing larger files.
MP4 will compress the video more but results in a reduction in the video quality.
WMV and MOV are other standard video formats that retain video quality but generate larger files.
The resolution and frame rate both impact video quality and file size. Understanding resolution and frame rate is critical to making the right choice.
Video Resolution
Videos are made up of individual frames or pictures, displayed one after the other to create the video. The amount of pixels that make up the image in each frame determines the resolution of the frame, and by extension, the video.
More pixels result in a more detailed, clearer video and increased file size. Do you really need to use the highest resolution? How the video will be viewed and what your goal with the video is will determine that.
If you intend the video to be viewed on a large TV screen, then you need to send it using higher resolutions like 1080p or even 4k if you want it to look terrific.
However, if the person watches it on a smaller screen, then often 720p will be fine. If the video is more about delivering information rather than for entertainment purposes, you could reduce the resolution even further. A 480p video file will be much easier to send than a 1080p video.
Frame Rate
Video frame rate refers to how many individual frames are displayed one after the other in a second. It’s quoted as Frames Per Second or “fps”. A higher frame rate results in a smoother video and a bigger video file size, which is especially convenient for screen recording games.
If your video has a lot of fast-moving motion, you’ll need a higher frame rate to display it properly without flickering. But sometimes, a video contains very little motion. If the video is of a person speaking or an instructional screen recording then you could reduce the video frame rate to 24 fps or 30 fps rather than 60 fps.
Can I Send Video To Another Phone Without Losing Quality?
Yes. Use Bluetooth if the other phone is nearby. Otherwise, use cloud storage to upload the video and create a link to share.
Will My Video Lose Quality If I Email It?
If your mail client has a limit on the size of the file you can attach, it may compress the video and cause a reduction in video quality. If you want to email a video without losing quality, create and email a video link.
Why Do My Videos Lose Quality When I Send Them?
The application you’re using to send the video may be compressing it before sending it. Instead of sending the video file, instead, upload the video to cloud storage and share a link to the online version.