Why is a 9GB video apparently too big for my 32GB USB stick?

[Eldiablojoe]

I used my iPhone to record an interview at work. It recorded for just over an hour before the battery died.

I transferred that video to my MacBook via sycing with iPhoto, and then copying it on to the desktop so it would be easier to work with.

Now I am trying to get that video onto a media (USB drive or disc) to provide my boss.

I get messages that the interview file (at just under 9GB) is too big for the 700MB capacity CD-R disc, and too big for the unknown size disc we usually use for videos.

So, I am trying to transfer the file off my desktop onto my 32GB USB drive that the "info" window shows still has 30GB of available space. I still receive a message that the video file is too large.

What am I doing wrong and how can I get this file where I need it to go?

Thanks!

 

[kohlson]

Could be a couple of things. Is the USB stick formatted for FAT? If so, the max file size is 4GB. Or the USB key could have a few files in the Trash, which would need to be deleted to clear them off the stick.
Can you use AirDrop to transfer to your boss' system (you can if he has a Mac, and you both have later OSs)?

 

[Eldiablojoe]

Thanks Kohlson.

The USB stick should be formatted appropriately. I have move photos and Word documents between my MacBook and the PCs at work regularly. There are, unfortunately, no Macs at work. There may be files in the trash, but they would only be a few Word docs, so not space-hogs. Besides, the right-click Get Info on the USB stick clearly indicates over 30GB available, and the file I want to move is under 9GB.

 

[ColdCase]

Thanks Kohlson.

The USB stick should be formatted appropriately.

What format is the USB stick? Word and photo files are rarely over 3MB. You are trying to move a 9GB file, a quite different situation.

Otherwise I believe you can open the video in Quicktime and export (share) as a compressed video, which reduces the file size significantly.

 

[monokakata]

The USB stick should be formatted appropriately. . . . Besides, the right-click Get Info on the USB stick clearly indicates over 30GB available, and the file I want to move is under 9GB.

Can you tell us whether the USB stick is formatted in plain old FAT or in EXFAT?

That's what Kohnson was saying -- if it's FAT, then it doesn't matter how much free space there is, the stick's not going to accept a 9 GB file.

 

[Eldiablojoe]

Ohhhh, I see. Yes. Right-Click, Get Info says: "Format: MS-DOS (FAT32)"

I will try ColdCase's solution and see what happens.

 

[monokakata]

Ohhhh, I see. Yes. Right-Click, Get Info says: "Format: MS-DOS (FAT32)"

I will try ColdCase's solution and see what happens.

Well, there's your answer. A FAT32 drive of any kind cannot handle a 9 GB file.

There's no need to compress. Simply move everything that's on your stick off the stick into temporary storage.

Then use Disk Utility to format the USB stick to EX-FAT (you do this by re-partitioning the stick with an EX-FAT partition) -- this is easily-done.

Your people at the Windows end of things will notice no difference. All modern Windows machines are happy with EX-FAT.

Problem solved.

 

[Eldiablojoe]

Can I just temporarily move my 1-2GB worth of content off the stick and onto a folder on the desktop, reformat the stick, and then move it all back instead of trying to format different partitions on the stick?

Will an EXFAT formatted stick still be compatible with jpg and Word files between OSX and PCs?

 

[arjen92]

If it's just an interview then quality doesn't matter that much. I would suggest highly compressing it. (using handbrake or mpegstreamclip). Make it a 2GB file. It will fit more easily on your USB Stick. No long waiting times either when you want to leave it on other computers.

 

[monokakata]

Can I just temporarily move my 1-2GB worth of content off the stick and onto a folder on the desktop, reformat the stick, and then move it all back instead of trying to format different partitions on the stick?

Will an EXFAT formatted stick still be compatible with jpg and Word files between OSX and PCs?

Certainly you can move off, repartition, and move back on. By "re-partitioning" I meant to flush the old one and create a new EXFAT one.

And yes, you won't notice any difference, and neither will anybody else. The drive format is independent of any app's format.

 

[Chad3eleven]

I would compress it.. moving a 9gb file around on a usb stick is slow.

I also vote for mpeg stream clip..

Id make it a 1280x720, 3000 kbps h.264 quicktime.. that would cutdown on file size a ton.

Also, sign up for Copy https://www.copy.com/home/

free 15 gbs cloud storage.. you could copy that large file up to the server and send out a link.

 

[monokakata]

I hope you're not taking my answer as being in disagreement with the two posters who recommend compression.

I agree that compression is a good idea.

But compression isn't the same thing as formatting your stick so that it can take a large file. It's a different kind of solution than what I suggested. Not better, not worse, just a different way for you to do what you need to.

Doing them both would be a good solution.

 

[ChrisA]

...
I get messages that the interview file (at just under 9GB) is too big for the 700MB capacity CD-R disc, and too big for the unknown size disc we usually use for .....

THIS is the root of the problem. There is no reason for an hour long video to be 9GB. You can compress it down to 2GB and still have very high quality. In fact for your purposes you could go below 1GB file size and still not have any visible problems. The simplest why to compress the video is software called "handbrake".

This is the 21st century, no need to physically walk a file down the hall, put it on a networked disk drive someplace and your boss can get it there.

Your first step should be to compress it.

 

[Chad3eleven]

I hope you're not taking my answer as being in disagreement with the two posters who recommend compression.

I agree that compression is a good idea.

But compression isn't the same thing as formatting your stick so that it can take a large file. It's a different kind of solution than what I suggested. Not better, not worse, just a different way for you to do what you need to.

Doing them both would be a good solution.

True.. but lets think about this.. who wants to walk around with a 9GB file on a usb drive to pass around? How long would that take to transfer? 10 mins? 20 mins?

What we dont know is if there are different platforms at his work (mac and PC) therefore you would have to format it as an ExFat disc, (usually from a windows machine)and that would allow both machines to read and copy the file, (unless you have some third party apps installed to allow a Mac to read NTFS..) Unless the file is up on a server.. then people can read it..

If you want to keep the file original (9 gbs), just format your thumb drive for NTFS (if on a PC) and drop the file on there (make sure your drive is large enough)

I would still aim to compress it down a bit and pass that file off to folks.

 

[monokakata]

He already said there were Windows machines -- true, he said "PC" but we all know what that means.

Maybe you don't know that Disk Utility is happy to format anything to ExFAT, and that's all I suggested to him. He doesn't need a Windows machine for that.

Once his stick's in ExFAT, he can stop worrying -- he can put any file that will fit, and any Windows or Mac machine will read it just fine.

Whether he should or shouldn't keep a 9 GB video file on a USB stick is another matter. He never asked about that, if you remember. He asked only why he couldn't copy it to his USB stick, and I answered that and showed him how he could, if he wanted to.

 

[Siderz]

I agree with compressing it as everyone else is saying.

How important is the image quality of the interview anyway? Because you might not even need it to be 720p, I'd probably bring it down to 360p if it's mainly just seeing a guy talk to the camera. See the attachment for the settings I use for 360p video.

If there's more to the video where you need to see it very well then 720p is probably the best bet, if he's holding up photos or something.

 

[gnasher729]

Thanks Kohlson.

The USB stick should be formatted appropriately. I have move photos and Word documents between my MacBook and the PCs at work regularly. There are, unfortunately, no Macs at work. There may be files in the trash, but they would only be a few Word docs, so not space-hogs. Besides, the right-click Get Info on the USB stick clearly indicates over 30GB available, and the file I want to move is under 9GB.

If you use it to transfer data between Mac and PC, then it is FAT formatted, and FAT only supports files up to 4 GB.

 

[Siderz]

If you use it to transfer data between Mac and PC, then it is FAT formatted, and FAT only supports files up to 4 GB.

That's already been mentioned

Is the USB stick formatted for FAT? If so, the max file size is 4GB.

Can you tell us whether the USB stick is formatted in plain old FAT or in EXFAT?

That's what Kohnson was saying -- if it's FAT, then it doesn't matter how much free space there is, the stick's not going to accept a 9 GB file.

Ohhhh, I see. Yes. Right-Click, Get Info says: "Format: MS-DOS (FAT32)"

Well, there's your answer. A FAT32 drive of any kind cannot handle a 9 GB file.

 

[JustinePaula]

Why for the love of pears are we still in 2014, post 64bit introduction, still taking about a file system from 1995??? FAT is so old and out dated, it is about as useful as a 1.44MB stiffy disk..

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Wow 19 answers to this question and it's been answered correctly several times now.

OP, reformat that USB drive as ExFAT in Disk Utility. Then you can put the whole 9GB file on it. The existing format can't handle files bigger than 4GB.

And/Or OP, running it through something like Handbrake to compress it will likely yield a much smaller file without any noticeable change in quality. No need to choose a bunch of settings or even switch to 720p. Just go with a Handbrake preset like AppleTV3 and let Handbrake do it's thing.

The reformat will only need to be done this one time and should work well with Windows or Mac machines forever-after.

The compression part should be done with every file you shoot just so that you're not wasting a bunch of space storing these on some drives somewhere.

JustinePaula, FAT is still around because people still use old computers that may not embrace ExFAT. Sell something formatted as FAT and it "just works" on anything. Sell something newer and it may not work for some. On the Mac side, your Mac is probably using HFS+ which was the file system for OS 8.1 released in the late 1990s. There's been a few efforts to update that to something more modern too (like the whole ZFS project http://arstechnica.com/apple/2009/10/apple-abandons-zfs-on-mac-os-x-project-over-licensing-issues/) but we're still using that old file system on our Macs.

 

[JustinePaula]

I am sure there are people and companies that still use win3.1, does that mean we need to universally support them with FAT? No.. There are cars from 1900 that are mechanically sound, does that mean the gas companies must maintain a gas supply for cars that need leaded gas? NO that would be insane, and the gas companies would agree, for good reason.

FAT is obsolete technology, the same for 1.44MB stiffy disks, Kodak stopped producing film stock for a reason, it was no longer popular, and yes this is sad, it renders millions of cameras inoperable, but we have to move on..

Hankering after the past is great, who is going to pay for this??

 

[monokakata]

Hankering after the past is great, who is going to pay for this??

Having FAT 32 around costs money?

The OP was confused for longer than he should have been, but that's not FAT32's fault.

Having a generic file spec around that assures you that just about any machine out there can read what you put on a USB stick or even a spinning disk drive is some kind of problem?

Where on earth is the downside of that?

I think it's pretty damn useful. I like knowing that I can take a USB stick made on my late-model Mac over to a PC I built fifteen years ago, that's still in use by someone else, and be confident that the old PC is going to read that stick.

I'd feel like a complete dork if I said to my friend -- I'd like you to take a look at this book I'm working on, but you're going to need a new PC first, or a Mac.

Maybe you don't work in a heterogenous computing environment, or maybe everybody you exchange data with has the latest and greatest.

I always have current-generation hardware and software, but I'd guess that 50-60% of the people I exchange information with don't. And never will.

I'm trying really hard to see the downside of keeping a ziploc bag full of USB2 FAT32 thumbdrives in my junk drawer. Or of buying a new one and finding that (gasp!) it's formatted in FAT32 and I might need to reformat it -- a moment's work. And I can't.

Let us all know what the downside is, will you?

 

[JustinePaula]

It is simple, a 32 or 64 GB thumb-drive is designed to be formatted and used mainly with 64bit devices, I am so hoping that before too long USB 2.x is as dead as a dodo, it is way too slow to be useful in a 64bit system.

USB 3.x is more efficient, a bit more expensive, but time is money, and worth the expense.

Buy a few drives, format them FAT or FAT32, seal in a plastic glad bag, dust and moisture free with the silica packets, leave in the computer case, use as when required, just why I must pay for old technology makes no sense, I want speedy reliable devices, and USB 2.0 thumb drives is no longer useful for me.

 

[OneAnswer]

Kodak stopped producing film stock for a reason, it was no longer popular, and yes this is sad, it renders millions of cameras inoperable, but we have to move on..

Kodak was not the only producer of photographic film.
Ilford does still exist, Fuji does still exist, Agfa does still exist. Many other companies all over the world still provide access to photographic films, even Kodak is still offering it for medium and small format.

 

[JustinePaula]

Henceforth and forever more it shall be known that "OneAnswer" will henceforth have the name Anarack!!