How to Send Your Footage for Video Editing (Without Mailing a Hard Drive)

Here's the thing that trips people up about online video editing: not the price, not the creative side, but the boring logistics of getting the footage to the editor. Video files are huge. You can't email them. You don't want to mail a hard drive. And the editor's website shouldn't be asking you to upload twenty gigabytes through a browser.

The answer is simple and free, and once you've done it once you'll never think about it again: a shareable cloud link. Here's exactly how to do it, and the one setting that causes almost every delay.

The core idea: share a link, not the files

You don't send video files. You put everything in one folder on a cloud service you already have, and you send the editor a link to that folder. The editor downloads from the link on their end. That's the whole model.

This solves every problem at once:

• No email size limits (email caps out around 25 MB — a single clip blows past that).
• No giant uploads to a website that fail halfway and start over.
• No mailing hard drives and waiting days.
• The files stay in your control — you're sharing access, not handing over ownership.

The three services that work for this are Google Drive, Dropbox, and WeTransfer. You almost certainly already have one.

Step by step: Google Drive (most common)

1. Make a folder. Open Google Drive, click New → Folder, name it something clear like "Wedding Footage for Editing."
2. Put everything in it. Drag in all your clips and photos — the raw videos, phone clips, photos to weave in. Don't pre-curate; send it all.
3. Wait for the uploads to finish. Check that every file shows as fully uploaded (no spinning sync icons), especially the large video files.
4. Share the folder correctly. Right-click the folder → Share. Under General access, change "Restricted" to "Anyone with the link." Set the role to Viewer.
5. Copy the link and paste it into your editing brief.

That's it. The editor opens the link and downloads everything.

Step by step: Dropbox

1. Create a folder and upload all your footage and photos into it.
2. Hover over the folder → Share → Create link (or "Copy link").
3. Make sure the link is set so anyone with the link can view (Dropbox usually defaults to this for shared links).
4. Paste the link into your brief.

Step by step: WeTransfer

1. Go to WeTransfer, choose "Send as link" (not email, so you control where it goes).
2. Add all your files.
3. Upload, then copy the generated link and paste it into your brief.

One caveat: free WeTransfer links expire (typically after 7 days). That's fine for a quick hand-off if the editor downloads promptly, but for a multi-day project, Google Drive or Dropbox is safer because the files stay available the whole time.

The #1 cause of delays: the sharing setting

If you take one thing from this guide, take this: the single most common reason an editor can't start is a folder left on "Restricted."

When a link is Restricted, only specific invited accounts can open it. The editor clicks your link and hits a "Request access" wall. Now there's a back-and-forth, a delay, and a frustrated start.

Before you send the link, test it yourself: open the link in a private/incognito window where you're not logged in. If you can see and download the files, so can the editor. If you hit a login or "request access" wall, your sharing is still set to Restricted — fix it.

A quick checklist before you hit send

• Everything is in one folder — clips, photos, anything to be woven in.
• All uploads finished — no half-synced large files.
• Sharing set to "Anyone with the link can view."
• Link tested in an incognito window — it opens without a login.
• Notes added to the brief — the feel you want, the song, the hero moments, any "must include" clips.

Bonus: make the editor's job (and your result) better

While you're at it:

• Name your hero files clearly — "PROPOSAL_clip.mov," "use-this-for-opening.jpg" — so the editor knows what matters.
• Add a short text note in the folder if you have specific instructions for certain clips.
• Don't compress or trim to "help" — send the originals at full quality. Editors want the most to work with.

The bottom line

Sending footage for editing sounds like the hard part and is actually the easy part. Put everything in one cloud folder, set it to "anyone with the link can view," test the link in an incognito window, and paste it into your brief. The only real pitfall — the Restricted setting — takes ten seconds to fix and saves you a day of back-and-forth. Then the editor takes it from there.

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Related pages

• Get your video edited online
• How to choose the right video length
• Wedding video editing