How to share videos online for frustration-free feedback and approval

by | Apr 14, 2023 | Blogs |

How to share videos online for frustration-free feedback and approval

Table of contents

  1. Introduction

  2. Sharing is Caring—or is it?

  3. Problem 1—Mind the File Size

  4. Fixing Problem 1—Resizing Video Files

  5. Problem 2: Frustration-Free Video Approvals

  6. Fixing These Video Review Problems, the Frustration-Free Way

  7. What is QuickReviewer?

  8. How Does QuickReviewer Work?

I am a content developer. I create award-winning content for websites, blogs, social media posts, videos, newsletters, and PR posts daily. My typical day begins with 42356237896478236 feedback emails from various stakeholders and a 10,000-gallon bucket-load of frustration that stems from trying to figure out how to be more productive while ensuring that I do not miss out on customer (or stakeholder) feedback and approval comments.

If you’re a creative director, a content creator, or a graphic or video artist, you know what I’m getting to next, right? Sharing videos online. 

Sharing is caring—or is it?

Multiple clients or stakeholders bring a long list of preferred ways to share videos online. My team likes a shared drive, while others want it on WhatsApp, email, and Slack. Don’t get me wrong—most platforms are great for immediate, one-time feedback. However, when it comes to a complex document or a video that may have dozens of comments from dozens of stakeholders, you know it will be a long, long day. 

Problem 1—mind the file size

Whenever I have a video file that needs feedback or approval, I consistently dread the file size problem. Raw video files can be several hundred megabytes and can easily breach the gigabyte barrier if the video is long enough. If you’re wondering why this is a problem, here’s a list of some popular platforms and their file size limits:

  1. Email

    Email is the mainstay of enterprise communications, and most organizations rely on emails for anything important. However, video approvals on emails are a problem due to file size limitations. All video files must be below 20 MB or need resizing to send them through. Here’s the file size limit for popular email platforms:

    • Outlook

              20 MB

    • Apple iCloud mail

              20 MB

    • Gmail

              20 MB

  2. WhatsApp

    20 MB!

    Although many of my clients and teammates use this tool for communication, its file size limit is only a measly 20 MB—making it challenging to send video files for approval without resizing them.

  3. Slack

    1 GB

    Slack is much more forgiving than other tools, considering its file-sending limit is a whopping gigabyte! 

  4. Teams

    250 GB

    Teams only allows you to upload files to SharePoint if you wish to share them. However, that is often inconvenient for third-party designers.

  5. Cloud-based drives and file transfer services

    1 GB or more

    Cloud-based drives or file-sharing services allow you to share video files for free, as long as they do not breach the 1 GB (in some cases, 2 GB) limit.

Fixing problem 1—resizing video files

The quick and dirty way to fix the first problem (sharing videos online) is to resize them. Resizing means rendering a smaller video or compressing it so that the resultant filesize works with your “file sending” medium of choice. 

  • Option 1: Using compression tools

Compression tools such as HandBrake, Compressor, Freemake, WonderShare UniConverter and others can help you reduce the file size of your rendered video. Some of these tools can reduce web-optimized file sizes by up to 70%, reducing a 50 MB file to a mere 15 MB, which is acceptable to most platforms.

  • Option 2: Reducing the export resolution

Try dropping the resolution of your video file to 720p or 1080p if you initially rendered it at 4K. 

  • Option 3: Switching on variable bitrate

With the variable bitrate option on, Adobe’s video encoder makes two passes of your video from either end (beginning to end and end to beginning), taking longer to encode the video but dropping the file size.

Together, these three options will help to reduce the file size by over 80%. However, if your video is huge and the three options cannot bring the file size down, you must resort to sharing files over a cloud-based drive.

Problem 2: Frustration-free Video approvals 

Sharing videos online with a client or a team is the first part of the problem. Getting reviews is the other big rock you must get out of the way. Here’s how I rate most approval methods today:

  • Email

I get so lost in email chains that it becomes downright impossible to incorporate all the comments in time. Plus, there’s always the timestamp issue where you might mix up comments as they come in. Oh, and someone always wakes up to the v1 mail chain and sends their inputs after v3 is nearly done!

  • WhatsApp

WhatsApp groups and individual DMs make figuring out what’s happening in the review cycles a bit confusing. In WhatsApp groups, keeping track of who said what is difficult, making it downright impossible to keep up.

  • Slack

I love Slack as a communication tool, but as a review tool, not so much. Conversational threads can get lost in time, and you will find conversations moving off to a different topic altogether, making it difficult to track what matters for the review.

  • Teams and other file-sharing tools

I have had file-sharing links timeout on more than one occasion. Additionally, managing versions, comment files and tying everything together is just too cumbersome to bother with.

  • Timestamps, versions and more

Video reviews are riddled with timestamp errors, delayed reviews and confusing or unclear feedback. The lack of annotations makes things worse for videos, and reviewers take screenshots and spend an extra hour ensuring everything is in place rather than giving reviews that are seamless and easy for the video editor to understand.

Fixing these video review problems, the frustration-free way

What if I told you there was a way to remove all these frustrations without running through hoops and pulling your hair out in the process? No, it’s not black magic—but simply a transformation of your video review process to a more efficient and accountable one.

Enter QuickReviewer—a simple, easy-to-use tool that will transform your video (and other formats) editing problems to rest for good. 

What is QuickReviewer?

QuickReviewer is a cloud-based review and approval software that speeds up your post-production process. QuickReviewer helps you to share files with your team and get feedback without sending a single email: no mail chains, no messages, no lost drafts, nothing. Just a simple, easy-to-use interface that helps your video reviews go through seamlessly. 

How does QuickReviewer work?

Believe it or not, all you have to do is sign up, drag and drop files and share them with reviewers—while QuickReviewer takes care of the rest. Here’s how this works:

  1. Create an account on the QuickReviewer website
  2. Choose a subscription that suits your need
  3. Upload your video files
  4. Share videos online with reviewers and stakeholders

That’s it. QuickReviewer automatically notifies all stakeholders about a pending video review. Stakeholders can watch the video within QuickReviewer without having to download anything. They can suggest edits, annotate videos, and respond to comments by other reviewers—all from one seamless, integrated interface.

As all reviewers get to see the exact version of the video, there are no skipped versions or review conflicts. Additionally, QuickReviewer’s world-class review process management system helps ensure that every reviewer is on the same page and can track changes as they occur. If you want to see what the original version looked like, the side-by-side review option has got you covered.

QuickReviewer ensures:

Zero frustration

Zero conflicts

Zero problems

Zero delays

Just a simple, frustration-free way to share videos online for review. Switch to QuickReviewer and speed up your review process today.

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