Is it possible to uncompress a video file?

[chrisj]

After creating a video on my iPhone 4. I want to send it by text in as good of quality as it is when I play it on the device, but apparently the iPhone compresses the file prior to sending. Is there any way to uncompress the file once it's received?

[deadrats]

all video recorded by a phone is compressed during recording and uncompressed during playback. the compression takes place during the recording not the sending, i'm not sure where you got the impression that it's compressed again prior to it being sent. you're better off uploading the file to file sharing site and sending the recipient the link.

[budwzr]

After creating a video on my iPhone 4. I want to send it by text ...

Umm...I think you mean "as an attachment". Nobody does this. Upload it to YouTube and then pass the link by text. You can have Private videos on YT, just look for that option.

[Brad]

i'm not sure where you got the impression that it's compressed again prior to it being sent.

Videos and photos are both recompressed before being sent via MMS.

Is there any way to uncompress the file once it's received?

No. Email the original, Dropbox it, etc.

[deadrats]

i'm not sure where you got the impression that it's compressed again prior to it being sent.

Videos and photos are both recompressed before being sent via MMS.

i would love to see some evidence of this, in fact it seems to me that since carriers charge by the MB for data that it would be in their best interest not recompress it so they can charge you as much as possible.

[Noahtuck]

Are you maybe confusing "decompressing" with "decoding" ??

After all it's not a ZIP, RAR, 7zip, FLAC, etc file........

all video recorded by a phone is compressed during recording and uncompressed during playback.

[budwzr]

...i would love to see some evidence of this, in fact it seems to me that since carriers charge by the MB for data that it would be in their best interest not recompress it so they can charge you as much as possible.

Yes, I don't send photos for this reason. A lot of them are 300+Mb. Especially on iPhones.

[Cornucopia]

If this happens, and this is not necessarily an automatic thing, it make the quality greatly worse.

Email & MMS are both very bad ways to attempt transferring files (over ~10MB).

Yt/vimeo or dropbox/sendfile or ftp with the links to them only sent via email, etc.

Scott

[Baldrick]

Yep, share the video on icloud or whatever it's called instead.

[hello_hello]

i'm not sure where you got the impression that it's compressed again prior to it being sent.

Videos and photos are both recompressed before being sent via MMS.

i would love to see some evidence of this, in fact it seems to me that since carriers charge by the MB for data that it would be in their best interest not recompress it so they can charge you as much as possible.

They might charge by the MB for data but does that always include MMS?
Different providers may enforce different MMS size limits, although a google indicates it could be anywhere from 300KB to 1MB or so.

As far as evidence goes regarding the re-compression of video for sending via MMS, be it somewhat anecdotal:
https://forums.att.com/t5/Wireless-General-Device/At-amp-t-MMS-sending-limit/td-p/3376361
http://androidforums.com/htc-evo-3d/510200-poor-mms-video-quality-normal-due-way-file-...e-sending.html

According to a post in this thread, iphones can also use a system called imessage which sounds like it sends data independently of the MMS system, so there'd be no need to re-compress video. I've never owned an iphone myself so I don't know how accurate that is, and I guess you'd need the receiving phone to be an iphone too?.
http://forums.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-s4/276787-how-send-videos-s4.html#post2766537
iPhone's can send large videos to each other because of iMessege, which sends the file through a data connection as opposed to SMS/MMS. You can send videos via MMS, though they'll be terrible quality due to file size constraints via cellular networks.

[Cornucopia]

ALL providers & systems I have worked with have size limitations on MMS. It might even be in the spec (haven't checked). Heck, if you have more than too many ASCII characters it has to break up the message into parts.

But a "limitation" on a transmission channel DOES NOT equate to doing a re-compression on the input. That's just absurd. If you have a Piano sent to your new apartment and the door is narrow, does the door squeeze the piano into it? The gate is just the target limitation in the equation, not the squeezing device. You have to do that yourself. Now, it is possible that the application that is doing the sending (the "piano mover") also has the capability to provide "squeezing", but that isn't the same thing as the transmission system ("door") having that capability.

Regarless of all that, it is still quite clear that this whole avenue of attempting to use MMS, email, SMS, Whatsapp, etc to transfer files is INEFFICIENT for handling large filesizes, in either a DL/cache or streaming format.

There are already a number of well-established, and cheap-to-free, alternatives that ARE equipped for large filesize transfer. I cannot believe this MMS/email portion of the thread is even continuing - what a waste of effort! Heck, you'd be DONE transferring by now.

And while I understand that newbies continue to not really understand the idea of media compression and how to work with it, it seems incumbent upon all of us here to make it abundantly clear that what most people are dealing with on a day-to-day basis with video is ALREADY ridiculously compressed, whether it is 1/100th it's original uncompressed size, like DVD & BD often are, or 1/300-1/800th it's original uncompressed size, like web material often is.

And even the assumption that you can compress video nearly continuously like squeezing MORE and MORE water out of a sponge, is flawed. You must use the analogy in it's whole context: each time you squeeze more water out, less water is left, it becomes harder to squeeze any more out, and the sponge becomes more deformed. Ultimately, there IS a point at which that sponge is dessicated and shriveled almost beyond recognition, and there is no point in trying to squeeze more water out, you might as well try to squeeze blood out of a stone. All that's left is just the sponge. But wait, you want to send that down some pipe that is STILL 1/3 it's size? Let's all get real, people, and remember that there are immutable laws of physics going on here.

Scott