Your gallery's been delivered + prints are on your walls. You had a long work day and honestly have forgotten about your wedding film altogether when we slide into your email with a link to what can only be described as pure wedding glory!
While we encourage a date night to go through your wedding pictures, we can't emphasize date night more for watching your film! We never go to the movies without our favorite snacks (sometimes movie night in with our favorite meals) so we say do the same for a movie about your love! After you've watched it just the two of you... fam movie night next! The texts we've gotten from couples who invited their family over to watch their film altogether have had us absolutely undone. Creating an experience for yourselves and your loved ones has us honored! We did the same when we edited our parents wedding film and the whole family ended the evening in tears!!
Okay, but now what do you do? Let's hit on downloading, backing up, and sharing.
Downloading + Backing Up.
Because there are no good platforms for videographers to share their films with their clients (like the way we present photos in those lovely galleries to our Brides), we use a software that drops an email in your inbox with a downloadable link. This link only lasts for a week, which is kind of annoying, but the easiest way to send your high res video file. We also send a Vimeo link to our couples so you're able to watch and share with family and friends quickly and easily!
In the same we way don't recommend saving your high res photos to your phone, we say the same for video! The high res film file is so large that the minute you try to send via iMessage or Instagram you're going to end up compressing the file! Compressed means a file that's information/size has been reduced in order to save space. This means you're going to end up with a blurry or pixel-y or even laggy video when you text it or try to post it! More on compression later...
So don't save your video on your phone as your main source of files! Because the file is so large you will need a laptop/desktop to save them. We encourage backing these up in two separate places. A thumb drive and a hard drive. We sell amazing quality thumb drives with your film (and gallery) uploaded to it already if that's easier on you! And we offer deals if you order in bulk for family/friends! Once you've received your thumb drive we definitely recommend a second place for them. Our favorite hard drive that's inexpensive is this one here. We trust them with our own files!
High Res Files vs. Compressed Ones.
What even is a high res file? How does this affect you? Res stands for resolution which a file's quality. Resolution is determined by how many pixels (little boxes of color/light/information) are in each frame of a video. The more pixels, the more resolution, the better the quality! The less resolution, the less pixels, the worst of quality. So working with an artist who understands this + how to shoot/edit is important for you!
That being said when we send our clients their downloadable link, it has the highest res we can send over to you- giving you the best quality possible. Which means the information of the file is extremely large. When you save it to your phone + then try to text it to your friends/family your phone will be unable to send the amount of information the file has. So what it ends up doing is "compressing" the file. This means your phone is creating a lesser quality file to send out, which means you will end up with pixel-y/blurry/laggy films!
But obviously sharing with family and friends is a priority so there are a few ways to combat this. First, you can Airdrop the file to anyone! Apple does not compress Airdropped files. The second way is to send out the Vimeo link we provide. This way you're able to easily send over a high res film to your loved ones!
So what can cause compression? When you send a photo or video through iMessage, the algorithm compresses the quality! When you go to post to Instagram, but the upload fails so you hit "Try Again", the algorithm compresses the quality! When you upload photos to Facebook.... yep, algorithm compressed quality!
This may not be a big deal to you if it's not something you care about. But this can also happen when you upload video's to a book making company if you're not uploading the original file. Knowing this information will help even when your mom and grandma want to do some sharing of their own!
While this blog only scratches the surface, we hope it helps to understand files + backing up your beloved moments! We also made a blog that hits on how to backup your gallery here.