Sending large files on line

[Andy in Germany]

The Elder Son and I are trying to make a video project work together, and because we're perfectionists we're making a lot of material for editing. Is there a way of sending lots of large files online, or would it make more sense to have a stick for them and send them registered post?

 

[vickster]

The Elder Son and I are trying to make a video project work together, and because we're perfectionists we're making a lot of material for editing. Is there a way of sending lots of large files online, or would it make more sense to have a stick for them and send them registered post?

Dropbox?

 

[ianrauk]

Dropbox or WeTransfer

 

[Chris S]

Google Drive?

 

[tom73]

Dropbox or Box

 

[IanSmithCSE]

Good evening,

The Elder Son and I are trying to make a video project work together, and because we're perfectionists we're making a lot of material for editing. Is there a way of sending lots of large files online, or would it make more sense to have a stick for them and send them registered post?

This is a quite techie solution but way back when, the internet had and still has, FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and SFTP (Simple File Transfer Protocol).

If either you or your son is so inclined to do the setup this could be the way to go.

You will probably need to do some reading to understand it, but this is a direct way of transfering files using IP addresses, FTP servers and all sorts of scary things. But at the end of the day the file is moved from your PC to his without a third party being involved.


Bye

Ian

 

[ColinJ]

... or would it make more sense to have a stick for them and send them registered post?

Blimey - do people still do that kind of thing!

The problem with sending the files over the internet would be if either of you has a slow connection or a low data limit.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Blimey - do people still do that kind of thing!

Based on the amount of data it can be faster to have a removable drive and drive over with it, rather than try out over any network. If its not time critical you can leave the network chugging away.

As an example, work out how long it would take to transfer 1TB over your broadband connection compared to having it couriered to the destination.

As an example on a typical broadband upload speed of 10 Mb/s, it’d take about 9 days.

 

[ColinJ]

As an example, work out how long it would take to transfer 1TB over your broadband connection compared to having it couriered to the destination.

In my case, a courier would be the answer since I am currently stuck with 16 Mb/s broadband, which would take nearly a week!

A gigabit connection could do it in a few hours.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

16 Mb/s broadband,

Is that your upload or download speed? Upload speed is often 1/4 of download speed.

 

[ColinJ]

Is that your upload or download speed? Upload speed is often 1/4 of download speed.

Aargh - good point... That is a snail-like 0.75 Mb/s, so a 1 TB upload would be more like 5 months!

 

[gbb]

WeTransfer gets used at work quite a lot it seems to work well.

 

[HobbesOnTour]

Is there a way of sending lots of large files online, or would it make more sense to have a stick for them and send them registered post?

A stick is very old school And open to corruption.

Depending on the size of the files I'd be looking at Google Drive. Big, big, big files might mean charges for memory though that'll be the same with any commercial provider and if you're willing to pay registered post fees........
You could either share your files through that, or set up a new account for the two of you to work out of.
You'd probably need some kind of protocol to make sure you weren't working on the same file at the same time.

It would be less "sending" the file, more downloading and then re-uploading the file. Again, for big files upload/download speed will be important.

In any case, the commercial options all have "free" basic levels (as far as I know) so you can test what works best for ye easily and cheaply enough.

 

[Andy in Germany]

Hi and thanks for the replies.

At the moment the issue is mainly upload speed, which is probably because I'm on the cheapest available broadband. Today it said 2gb would take about 8 hours. Even allowing for this to speed up over the upload that's a long, long time for a couple of five minute videos.

Talking with Elder Son, we realised that once he has the first batch, he can start work on editing and I can just bring future videos with me on a stick when I visit the family at weekends. Okay, so he lives a few K's away but that's a good excuse to visit him.

 

[AndyRM]

If upload speed (or even network reliability) is an issue, I'd go with a physical drive.

The cheapest DropBox option is £8 a month (the free option is pointless as you only get 2gb of storage). Google One (the upgraded version of Google Drive) is a lot cheaper, but if you're dealing with large video files you'll hit your storage/transfer limits pretty quickly.

I like @IanSmithCSE's suggestion, but you'd be paying for server space and again relying on connection speed.