File too large to send? How to fix it
How to get a video, photo or recording under the limit for Discord, Gmail, Outlook and WhatsApp without ruining it, and when to send it another way.
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In short: Compress the file to just under the limit: 10 MB for Discord, 20 MB to be safe for email. For video, trimming it shorter helps more than anything else. For photos, converting to JPG or WEBP usually cuts the size by ninety percent.
The limits
Discord: 10 MB on a free account. Gmail: 25 MB per message. Outlook.com: 20 MB. WhatsApp recompresses photos and videos you send as media; send the file as a document to avoid that.
Video
Trim first: the length is the biggest lever. Then compress to the limit with a size preset, which finds the best quality that fits instead of guessing at a slider.
Photos
A photo saved as PNG, or straight off a modern phone, can be tens of megabytes. Converted to JPG at high quality it becomes a few hundred kilobytes and looks the same.
When compressing is the wrong answer
If the file is going to someone who needs full quality, like footage for an editor, share a link from a cloud folder instead. Compression is for "look at this", not for masters.
Questions
How do I send a video that is too large?
Trim it, then compress it to the limit. For Discord that is 10 MB, for email aim for 20 MB.