Byte for byte
Send large video files without compression
A messaging app will happily take your 4K clip and hand the other person a soft, blocky version of it. Video is the one file type where the delivery method silently changes the product. Here the bytes that leave your disk are the bytes that arrive.
Short answer
How do I send a video file without losing quality?
Avoid anything that re-encodes on upload. Transfer the original file directly: create a 6-digit code, the other person enters it, and the file streams browser to browser untouched — same codec, same bitrate, same checksum, with no size limit to compress down to.
Send a cut now
Share the code; the other person enters it to connect
Drag the file in. It is only read from disk when the other side starts the download.
How it works
- 1
Drop in the original
The camera file, the ProRes export, the full-resolution master. No transcode step, no “optimising for the web”.
- 2
They pick what they need
Queue up a whole shoot. The other side sees names and sizes and downloads only the takes they actually want — your disk stays untouched until they click.
- 3
It arrives identical
Every chunk is authenticated on arrival, so the file that lands is bit-for-bit the one you sent, not a re-render of it.
Why video outgrows every free tier
| Footage | Roughly per minute | A 20-minute piece |
|---|---|---|
| 1080p H.264, streaming bitrate | 60–100 MB | about 1.5 GB |
| 4K from a recent phone | 250–450 MB | 5–9 GB |
| 4K H.265, high-bitrate camera | 600 MB–1 GB | 12–20 GB |
| ProRes 422 HQ, 1080p | about 1.5 GB | around 30 GB |
| ProRes 422 HQ, 4K | 5–7 GB | 100 GB and up |
Which leaves the usual bad options: compress it and ship something worse than what you shot, split it into parts and make the other person reassemble it, or pay for a tier you needed exactly once. A direct transfer has no tier to clear, because nothing is being stored on anyone’s behalf.
What “no re-encoding” actually saves you
- Colour and grade survive. Re-encoding is where log footage turns muddy and a careful grade picks up banding in the sky.
- Audio stays in sync and stays uncompressed if that is how you recorded it.
- Timecode, camera metadata and embedded LUT references are still there — the things an editor needs and a transcode quietly drops.
- Alpha channels and 10-bit depth survive. Most upload pipelines flatten both without telling you.
- The checksum matches, which matters when a client asks whether they received the approved master.
Where this fits in a real workflow
- Shooter to editor: hand off a card’s worth of rushes over the same Wi-Fi at local-network speed, without a shuttle drive.
- Editor to client: send the graded master directly, watch the progress complete, and know it arrived whole.
- Between your own machines: desktop to laptop before travelling, with no cloud sync waiting to finish.
- Long recordings: lectures, ceremonies, conference sessions — several hours in one file, no splitting.
Frequently asked questions
Will my video be compressed or re-encoded?
No. The file is transferred as bytes, not as media — nothing decodes or re-renders it. What arrives is identical to what left your disk, down to the checksum.
Can I send a 100 GB folder of footage?
Yes, though as individual files rather than a folder tree — select them all at once, or zip the folder if the structure matters. There is no size limit beyond free space on the receiving device.
How long will a 50 GB transfer take?
On a shared Wi-Fi, often minutes — it moves at local network speed. Across the internet it is governed by the slower side’s upload bandwidth, so a 20 Mbps upload means roughly six hours for 50 GB.
Can the other person start watching while it transfers?
No. The file is assembled once complete, so it is a delivery mechanism rather than a streaming one. For review-and-comment cycles, a preview platform is a better fit than raw delivery.
Does it compress video before sending to save time?
It checks, and then skips. Video is already compressed, so the sampling on the first chunks shows no gain and the deflate step is bypassed — you get the CPU back and the file stays untouched.
Is it safe to send unreleased footage this way?
It is end-to-end encrypted and never uploaded, so no copy exists outside the two machines. Verify the safety words with the recipient and there is no third party in the path at all.
Send the master, not a version of it
Create a code, read out six digits, drag the file in. No transcode, no tier, no quality conversation afterwards.
Start a transfer