compressing a file

[Luis Ortega]

My friend is trying to email me an attachment that is an interview that they did of him on local tv in Miami, so it must be some sort of av file. He has sent it twice but I have not received it.
I suspect that it may exceed the email attachment limits in apple's mail app, either on his end or my end, but I can't find any info on this.
I tried experimenting on my end, by just compressing an mov file in finder, but the zip file created is hardly any smaller than the original.
Is there any way to see whether mail has a file size limit set and if it adjustable?
Is there any way to really compress an av file to a small size in order to send it as an attachment?
They are not very computer literate, so we had little luck solving it over facetime.
If I gave them my dropbox account info, could they install dropbox and access my account and upload a file there that I could then download here?
Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

My friend is trying to email me an attachment that is an interview that they did of him on local tv in Miami, so it must be some sort of av file.

I guess you meant AVI? If not, what is an AV file?

I tried experimenting on my end, by just compressing an mov file in finder, but the zip file created is hardly any smaller than the original.

The MOV files was probably already using a highly compressive codec, thus further compression will not gain much more storage space or get you a smaller file.

Is there any way to see whether mail has a file size limit set and if it adjustable?

The mail client you use has often nothing to do with it, it is the email provider one uses, that sets the limit. Search for "name of email provider attachment size limit" to find out more.

Is there any way to really compress an av file to a small size in order to send it as an attachment?

Not if the video file is already using a highly compressive MPEG-4 like H.264 or Xvid or Divx.

If I gave them my dropbox account info, could they install dropbox and access my account and upload a file there that I could then download here?

Yes, that should work.

 

[Luis Ortega]

I guess you meant AVI? If not, what is an AV file?


The MOV files was probably already using a highly compressive codec, thus further compression will not gain much more storage space or get you a smaller file.

The mail client you use has often nothing to do with it, it is the email provider one uses, that sets the limit. Search for "name of email provider attachment size limit" to find out more.

Not if the video file is already using a highly compressive MPEG-4 like H.264 or Xvid or Divx.

Yes, that should work.

Thanks, I think that dropbox will be the way to go.
By av I just meant an audio-visual file like an mov or avi file.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Thanks, I think that dropbox will be the way to go.
By av I just meant an audio-visual file like an mov or avi file.

Thanks for clarification, but that moniker is used seldom for distributed video files (since most video files also contain audio).