Golf Swing Video File Conversion for Emailing
These steps appear tedious when you see them in print but only take a few minutes of work once you know your way around. In fact it may be faster than waiting for the upload process with YouTube as that is often very slow with large videos.
First, The raw video file from your camera will normally be a digital DV-AVI file and will be quite large, up to 200MB per minute, another reason not to have empty filler in your video as it should only take about 2 seconds per swing anyway.
The AVI format is the highest quality and is preferred for our analysis, but you need to make sure the file is not too big to send. Most email clients limit email attachments to anywhere from 10 – 25 MB which is likely less than 10 – 25 seconds of video. Currently, AOL’s limit is 16 MB, while GMail from Google is the most generous at 25 MB. In our testing it takes almost 10 minutes to send an email with a 25MB attachment with a reasonably fast internet connection. The sending is the slow part since upload speeds are never as fast as download speeds with most ISP’s.
An alternative is to use a “big file sending” email service such as Send6 or SendThisFile. They allow for up to 100mb attachments with their free service and Send6 will track your email’s progress. Note the files will expire in 3-7 days with the free version, so you need to be sure the email recipient downloads the files in a timely manner.
If your files are huge and you are using basic email service rather than one of the large file senders, then you will need to reduce the file size for emailing. The steps after shooting the video are to capture, convert and attach. Basically you must capture your video which is a fancy way of saying “transfer it” from your camera or SD Card to your computer. Then you need to check the file size for emailing and likely must convert it to a reduced, more compressed format such as mp4 or WMV. (Sometimes the file format conversion can be taken care of as part of the capture process.) Finally, attach your video file to your email and send it.
First, “capture” your video by uploading or importing your video from your camera or camera disk to your computer. We assume you have instructions for that with your camera.To retain maximum video quality save the file in its original DV or AVI format. It will be larger, but we will deal with that in a moment. See the links below for help capturing your video onto your computer from a camcorder with firewire or usb hookups.
Capturing Video using Windows Movie Maker for Windows based PC’s.
Capturing Video & Exporting Video using iMovie for Macs.
If your camera uses an SD Card and you have the card slots in your computer, you can simply insert the card into your computer and follow the prompts similar to the instructions above for Movie Maker and iMovie.
Alright, the terms can get confusing, but you’ve just captured video onto your computer. If you saved it in the original AVI format and it’s smaller than 25MB, you can skip this step on file conversion and go ahead to emailing using gmail for up to 25mb attachments. However, if your file exceeds your email provider’s limits, you need to compress the file further by using a video file converter. A good video file size for emailing is 5 – 10MB or less.
There are a number of video file converters available on the internet, but Kim Komando recommends the video converter from Freemake.com. Since she is considered “America’s Digital Goddess” (read Kim’s article here ) we won’t argue with her recommendation. We’ve used it here at Herman Williams Golf and agree it is very simple, efficient and best of all FREE with no ads, spam or malware. Check the Freemake.com site and download the free video conversion software here.
After downloading and activating the freemake video conversion software, open freemake and browse for your video file by clicking the “+video” button. Then click on the format you want to convert to – we suggest “mp4.” Finally, click “convert.” Very soon your golf swing video will be converted into the mp4 format and should be a much smaller, more manageable file for emailing. Here is the Freemake.com tutorial page for converting video formats.
After converting your video to a smaller file size, you may simply attach it to your email for sending after completing your payment.