How to Email iPhone Videos That Aren’t a Blurry Mess
By Mat Honan, Wired
If you want your videos to look their best, don’t send them from your iPhone via email or iMessage. Here’s why.
When you shoot a video, your camera app creates a very big chunk of data. Your phone looks at this giant file and says, “Hey, that’s too big and may cause problems. I don’t want to tell this guy I can’t send it because that will make him unhappy. So I’m going to try to make it smaller by throwing away details.”
Okay, it may not be that friendly. But the results are the same. Your phone tries to make the files smaller and more send-able so that neither you, nor your recipient will have to struggle with some huge file over a crappy 3G connection somewhere. Your phone doesn’t ask you if you want it to throw details away, it just does this on its own. But the end result is always the same: chunky, blocky video.
The solution is to use a backup service, and send directly from within that app. You can install something to automatically backup both your photos and video — Dropbox and Google+ are both fine choices. These will suck up every picture and video you take in full resolution to the internet. Don’t think of these as backups, or social networks. Just think of them as simple ways to store and share stuff.
Then try this: Instead of starting in your photos app and sharing via email or iMessage, start in your storage app itself, and share directly from it. Yes, you’ll essentially be sending a link to someone, rather than a file. But that’s okay, because then they’re getting a link with all the details of the original. And if you start in the app, rather than in your photos folder, it only takes a few taps to share something with anyone. You can even grab a link and send it on iMessage, if you’re really into that sort of thing.
However you do it, if you want people to see details, send a link to a file, not the file itself. In simple terms: Share the link or share the blur.
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