Sharing your video masterpiece is always a tradeoff between file size, video quality, and ease of sharing. The absolute easiest thing would be to save your video with no compression and email it.
You would have a 10 GB, that’s giga with a “G”, file, that no one could watch. In fact, when you tried to send it, your computer would either laugh at you or choke, sputter and die.
So we’ve established that uncompressed video, while retaining excellent clarity, cannot be emailed.
Once you introduce compression, you have to make sure the person on the receiving end has the same compression codec. If you used Quicktime, they have to have Quicktime. You use Flash, they have to have Flash. And it must be the same version. Or at least as current.
Someone who has Flash 8, cannot open your Flash 10 video. No problem, you say, I’ll just include a link in my email so they can download the latest version.
Ever try convincing someone that it’s perfectly fine (and free) and advisable, in fact, to download the latest version of Quicktime or Flash? Good luck.
Let’s say you do convince them. You’ll most likely have to talk them through the installation process.
Ever have someone tell you they could hear the audio on your movie, but not view the video? Their software was not up-to-date. “But I’ve got it right here on my hard drive.” They say. It’s entirely likely that, although they downloaded it, they never actually installed it.
But wait, there’s more. To make it small enough to email, most programs will compress your video down to 160×120, way too small to view any captions. Let’s get out those magnifying glasses right now.
Here’s a screen capture of a 160×120 movie:
Can you imagine watching an entire movie this tiny?
If you squint really hard you can almost read the caption.
This problem emailing movies is not a Mac vs. PC issue; it’s plain old operator error. The worst part is yet to come. Most people will never actually tell you that they weren’t able to view it. They simply don’t respond to the email. So you never know that they didn’t see your movie.
Have I convinced you yet, that it is neither simple nor convenient to email a video?
Well, apparently the folks at YouTube read the my-photo-video.com post from June about video sharing services. They now offer you the ability to limit viewing of your video to 25 people, without those people having to own YouTube accounts.
Hallelujah. They will give you a unique URL that you can paste into an email to your friends. And they’ll encode the video in such a way that everyone can view it.
Here’s that same movie at full resolution, using YouTube’s encoding.
The quality on YouTube may not be as good as you’ll see on your flat screen at home, but it’s a lot better and easier than what you can email. At least you know your friends and family will be able to watch it. So, let’s agree to leave video sharing to YouTube. We’ll just stick their link in our email.
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