How to send clients huge files

[John Rofrano]

[Jenn Lindsay] “But if I just export to QT using the “master file” option on the Share menu I get two huge files: one is 49GB and one is 19GB. “

With sizes that big it may take hours/days to upload and download even if you could find a way to send them. When I collaborate on projects with files that large we usually either mail 64GB/128GB Thumb drives, or if those aren’t large enough, we use WD 1TB My Passport Drive for Mac drives. Both are thin enough to fit in a bubble envelope. Clearly you could get away with the 128GB thumb drive in this case.

Perhaps you could email a DropBox link with the MP4 files and tell them the masters are being mailed via post office on a thumb drive. That should be acceptable. At some point bandwidth becomes the limiting factor and you just have to send something physical. Hope that helps unless someone has a better approach.

~jr

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[Joe Barta iv]

Buy a small portable drive and FedEx it to them. Include the price in your production invoice.

Newegg.com 250GB drive $36. There are many options out there.

Joe

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[Jenn Lindsay]

I forgot to add an important detail: I am in Italy and the client is in the USA. So snail mail is not a good option 🙁

http://www.JennLindsay.com
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[Jenn Lindsay]

PS: the client is in the USA and I’m in Italy, so I can’t snail mail….

http://www.JennLindsay.com
iMac 27-inch, 3.5 GHz Intel Core i7. 4GB GPU.
FCPX

[Shane Ross]

FedEx isn’t snail mail…it’ll get there quick. Not cheap, but you need to build that stuff into your price.

Shane
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[John Rofrano]

[Jenn Lindsay] “I am in Italy and the client is in the USA.”

Bonjourno! (I’m jealous) 😉

I don’t know how fast your internet connection is but when I was in Italy it wasn’t anywhere near my connection in the states. As Shane recommended FedEx it. Especially if you can send the MP4 via DropBox so they can see it while they are waiting for the master to arrive.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Mark Suszko]

From Europe, DHL express air should make it within 2 days, be sure to fold the cost into your billing.

[Jenn Lindsay]

So….just to be really clear with everyone. There’s no good way to do this electronically? I did this job almost for free and I’m not sure they would reimburse me a physical shipment (I’m a graduate student serving The University). I can proceed with shipping a flash drive, but I would like to really make sure there is no other cheaper/free-er option that can preserve the integrity of the file.

Thank you very much, everyone!
Jenn

http://www.JennLindsay.com
iMac 27-inch, 3.5 GHz Intel Core i7. 4GB GPU.
FCPX

[Roger Poole]

Hi Jenn, as everyone has suggested, your file sizes fall outside all the file transfer company limits, even a paid account on MailBigFile is limited to 20 gigs.
Most commercial operations use Peer to Peer software to transfer huge files between the iP addresses of client and host computers and so bypass the cloud and commercial file transfer services. It’s quite a while since I was involved in such things but a quick check shows that BitTorrent can do what you want to do by allowing the client access to the shared folder which you would set up in BitTorrent on your computer iP address or vice-versa. Take a look at the link below. If you have a decent internet connection where you are with no data limit it should work – if you can figure out how to use BitTorrent.

https://www.bittorrent.com/

[Mark Suszko]

Poole’s Idea would work for the budget you have. It’s not ideal, and assumes some level of computer savvy at the client end. But it could work.
When we feed TV stations, we use an outfit called Extreme Reach.