Sending Zip file by e-mail

hesmy

I'd like to send a video file by e-mail,but it's 217Mb,so far too big.I compressed it by (in Windows 7) by "send to compressed file" and a new icon appeared alongside the original but saying " compressed zip file".Problem is it shows the size of file as 217Mb.Could someone explain?

paddyrg

The original file was already as small as it could be. Compressing text is easy, compressing RAW images is easy, compressing something that's already super compressed is really hard.

pogofish

Its probably that the file can't be compressed by any great deal more and either the sending or receiving email has a maximum file size your file still exceeds.

agrinnall

A better option will be to upload it to somewhere like Dropbox and email a link to the file rather than the file itself.

Neil_Jones

hesmy wrote: »

I'd like to send a video file by e-mail,but it's 217Mb,so far too big.I compressed it by (in Windows 7) by "send to compressed file" and a new icon appeared alongside the original but saying " compressed zip file".Problem is it shows the size of file as 217Mb.Could someone explain?

The video is already compressed. Compression works by stripping out redundant information present in the file which is what makes it smaller. Your video in its uncompressed state would be ten times bigger - 4Gb for 7 minutes of video isn't usual.

You can't compress something that can't be compressed anymore. Much like your wardrobe can only hold a finite amount of clothing no matter how you arrange it.

It may be easier to upload the video to YouTube (you can set it to be private) and email the YouTube link to whoever you want to send the video to.

[Deleted User]

You can't compress a video with zip well, it's already 'encoded' to be as small as it can.

BUT - you can load it onto a cloud based system (dropbox, Amazon, Microsoft) and share a link to the file

John_Gray

Historical Anecdote
In the early days of DOS, before the internet, there were posts on the Bulletin Board System FIDOnet (anyone remember that?!) saying that you could use PKZip a number of times to continually shrink the size of a file to become as small as you wanted.

The slight snag about this is that it was utter rubbish!

When taken to its extreme, you would end up with a file containing a '1' bit or a '0' bit - and there's no way that this could then be expanded by using PKunzip for the same number of times to recreate the original file.

unholyangel

I use a program/app called send anywhere.

All the recipient needs is the 6 digit code and I don't think theres a limit on file size (at least I've sent ones that are several gb and had no issues). Can be sent to phones, tablets, pcs etc.

glennevis

You mentioned emailing the file. No chance it is too big. Most email servers limit attachments to 50, 25 or sometimes 10MB. Use one of the file hosting sites mentioned.

Alternatively if you use Gmail you can 'send' up to 10GB. If the file is over 50MB Google sends a link to the file which it stores in your Google Drive. Explained here (remove space from link):

https://support.google .com/mail/answer/6584?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en

Polarpenguin

https://wetransfer.com/

Use all the time at work for sending & receiving large files

daveyjp

Another vote for wetransfer. Really easy to use, no need for an account and it works!