Shipping the big file

Enter the problem: video from a baby shower taken with a Flip Camera is on your computer and looks great. You've retitled all the short clips and are ready to send them off to the mother-to-be. Just one problem...how do you send this stuff?

Email limits cap file attachments such as Gmail limit sizes of a single file to 20megabytes. Which is great if you're video was shot with a digital camera and in clips of 10 seconds each. But even with the flip the smallest video is 40-60 megabytes, around 3 times the size limits imposed by gmail. What if you had taken the time to put all those clips into a running movie with a cute title to show your consideration? How do you get the image from point A (your computer) to point B (her computer)? Here are some thoughts on what might work for you.

The Netflix approach: As the story goes Lesly Stahl, the creator of Netflix came up with the idea of shipping Dvd's rather than sending over the internet because the cost of bandwidth to send a movie was several times that to mail the data on a dvd. This same applies to your movie. Burning the file to a cd or dvd if you have a dvd burner and toss it in a jewel case to mail off. Yet times are changing and bandwidth is much more accessible than it was when Netflix started...

You too can YouTube: Everyone knows that YouTube is the place to go for movie clips, amateur comedy clips, and occasionally news. But did you know you can post you're own movie's? Even better by signing up for a free account you can make the movie private so that only people you choose (that also have an account with YouTube) have access to view that video. Issues are that there is a level of compression performed by YouTube so your video does lose a bit of quality. Also there exists a 10 minute limit per clip. But for the price (did I mention it was free?) you can't beat it. Also, by placing it on your private YouTube account any number of people can watch the video whenever they choose rather than you having to upload to each person individually.

A quick note here, there are a number of paid services that will replicate the features found in YouTube. Shutterfly and Flickr come to mind. Be aware of limitations so far as upload caps that these companies may enforce by pricing.

The Direct Approach: If you're the kind of person that refuses to cut video due to size or time limits, must maintain original video quality, and want it all for free then this is the solution for you. Take the movie file if it is already in one file or zip it if you have a group of files and send it off. Until recently FTP was the best way to get a large file (10 or more megabytes) from one pc to another. Though it was free, FTP requires port forwarding through every firewall you have on your end and the recipients pc for it to work. Not the easiest way to spend an afternoon when you'd rather be watching a movie rather than troubleshooting why it won't send.

While there are a number of options I found a free site called http://fileAI.com It works using java to easily just grab a file and queue it to send. A link is created that you can email to your recipient or just tell them the file number to request. File AI does the rest.

When your recipient clicks on the link they only need to choose where to save your file and the transfer starts right off.

Features include password protection of your link, transfer limits, and drag and drop of the file. In addition the user interface gives you real time statistics as your file uploads. A final cool feature is that as the file uploads the recipient can start downloading. Seems like a small thing but it really makes the overall time to transfer the file much faster. The downside? You have to coordinate with the person you are sending to so that you both have the website open at once during the transfer. And unlike FTP there is no picking up where you left off in the event that the stream is shut down. A final note, FileAI.com is a new site that may or may not be around. Enjoy it for now folks!

The Bottom line: Of all the three major solutions above using http://fileai.com is the fastest. Sure you can burn a cd in less time but how long to mail it? And while uploading to to YouTube works there is still a delay to compress and post on the server side. Not to mention owner ship of the video is someone in question. So play around with it because after all, its free!