Delivery without a second export
How to send large video files to clients
without losing quality.
A file does not degrade on the wire. It degrades when you compress it to fit a sending limit, and when the tool on the other end shows your client a capped preview instead of the film. The fix is to stop shrinking anything: keep the master, and send a page that streams it.
No credit card required. Cancel any time.
Updated September 2026
The premise is wrong
Quality is not lost in transit;
it is lost before and after.
A file either arrives byte for byte or it fails and retries. There is no third outcome where it arrives slightly softer. So when a client says the grade looks flat and the sky is banding, the damage happened in one of two rooms, and neither of them is the wire.
Room one: the squeeze before the send
The export is 38 GB, the free tier tops out at 3 GB, so the file goes back into the encoder at a bitrate that fits. That second export is the whole loss. Nobody ever calls it that, because it happened on your own machine and it looked fine on your own monitor.
Room two: the capped preview on arrival
The client opens the link and presses play on whatever the tool is willing to show them. WeTransfer previews MP4 and MOV up to 300 MB, and says the preview plays at a slightly lower resolution than the file. Google Drive plays back at a ceiling of 1920 x 1080. Dropbox previews up to 1080p on Basic and up to 2160p on paid plans, and only for files under 100 GB.
The download nobody does
Every one of those tools will hand over the untouched original if the client downloads it. Clients do not download 38 GB to give a note on the third act. They press play, they judge what plays, and the version they judged is the capped one.
This is why “we do not compress your files” and “your client saw your film” are two different promises. WeTransfer states plainly that it does not re-encode, compress or alter files at any stage, and that is true of the stored file. It is also true that a finished film is never under 300 MB, so in practice the browser preview your client watched was not your delivery. The file was perfect. The screening was not.
So the instruction that matters is short. Do not shrink the master to make it sendable. Host it, and send a page that streams it at the bitrate you exported.
300 MB
WeTransfer preview ceiling
MP4 and MOV only, and the preview plays at a slightly lower resolution than the file.
1920 x 1080
Google Drive playback ceiling
A 4K or 8K master is downscaled for playback on every Drive plan, paid included.
100 GB
Dropbox preview ceiling
The file must be smaller than 100 GB for a preview to render at all.
50 GB
Per file here, streamed as uploaded
Checked in the browser before the upload starts. No transcode step exists anywhere in the pipeline.
The method
Publish the master,
then send a link to it.
Four steps, and none of them is a second export. The point is that the file your client plays and the file you graded are the same object.
Export once, for the delivery, not for the pipe
Pick the bitrate the film deserves and stop there. There is no platform ceiling to duck under here, because there is no re-encode and no adaptive ladder. The honest trade: with no lower rendition to fall back on, a thin connection buffers instead of quietly switching your client to a mushy version.
Upload the master itself
Up to 50 GB per file, in 10 MB parts, with up to 60 attempts on each part and lanes that adapt to the line. Browser-decodable codecs such as H.264, HEVC and AV1 stream. ProRes 422, ProRes 4444 and DNxHR are hosted at full size for client download rather than played in a browser.
Decide who gets in
Five visibility modes: Private, Password, Unlisted, Public and Embed only. Passwords work on every plan including the free one, are checked server-side before the page renders, and are rate limited to 20 attempts per IP address per hour. Your client never makes an account.
Decide whether they can keep the file
The original-file download is a per-film switch, with no tier gate. Off, and the master streams but never leaves. On, and the watch page issues a signed download of the exact file you uploaded. The only case where the switch is forced off is a vaulted film.
What the uploader actually survives
The same 40 GB delivery, five ways
What each tool charges,
and what it does to the film.
Couriers move files well. That is not in dispute, and two of the four below explicitly promise not to touch your bytes. The question this table answers is narrower: what does the person on the other end actually see, and what does the meter count.
Every competitor figure comes from that vendor's own pricing page or help centre, fetched 5 September 2026, and is listed in the sources below. Dropbox and Google rendered Canadian dollars on the machine used for the fetch, so their prices are printed in the currency shown; no verifiable US figure exists for either today, and no WeTransfer price would render at all. Note one vendor self-contradiction we are not going to resolve for you: Dropbox's plans page lists Advanced transfers at 100 GB while its help centre lists Business Plus and Advanced at 250 GB, both fetched today. The meters are not comparable like for like: a courier bills the delivery, a host bills the shelf. Five clients re-downloading a 40 GB film is 200 GB on a per-gigabyte meter and nothing at all on a storage meter.
When we are the wrong answer
For a one-off terabyte handoff,
pay the courier.
There is a delivery this page does not win, and pretending otherwise would be the kind of claim we spend the rest of the site debunking.
Picture a camera-original handoff: 4 TB of card dumps going to a post house once, to be ingested into their own storage and never watched in a browser by anyone. Nothing in that job needs a player, a comment, a password page or a permanent home. It needs the bytes moved once, fast, and then forgotten. That is exactly what a per-gigabyte courier is built for, and MASV prices it accordingly: $0.25 per gigabyte pay as you go, no per-seat fee, with storage free for at least five days, which is longer than the handoff needs to exist. It publishes no maximum single-file size; “any size” is its only language on that point. A 50 GB per-file ceiling makes us the wrong tool for that job before the conversation starts.
The same logic runs the other way. Deliveries that repeat, that get watched, that collect notes, that need to be re-sent to a second stakeholder in November, are the ones a per-gigabyte meter punishes: the same 40 GB film delivered to five people, twice each, is 400 GB billed. On a storage meter it is 40 GB stored once, played as often as anyone likes. Match the meter to the shape of the work, not to the brand.
And there is a case for a drive in a courier bag, still, at the top end. If the material is measured in tens of terabytes and the deadline is tomorrow, physics wins over every plan on this page. That is not a defeat, it is a different job.
The short version
A delivery that
never leaves your grade.
Do not re-export to fit a limit
The second export is where the quality goes. If a tool's cap is forcing an encoder decision, the tool is wrong, not the film.
Send a page, not a package
The client presses play on the master at its own bitrate, on a player with no platform logo or watermark on any plan, free included.
Keep the download as a choice
The original-file toggle is per film, on any plan. Turn it on for the finishing house and off for the festival cut.
Let the meter match the work
Recurring, watched, re-sent deliveries belong on a storage meter. One-off bulk handoffs belong on a courier's per-gigabyte meter.
Questions
Frequently asked
Does sending a file over the internet reduce its quality?
No. A file either arrives byte for byte or it fails and retries. Quality is lost in two other places: before the send, when you re-export smaller to fit a limit, and after it, when the receiving tool plays a capped preview instead of the file. WeTransfer states it does not re-encode, compress or alter files at any stage, and it still previews only MP4 and MOV up to 300 MB, at a slightly lower resolution. The file is intact; what your client watched was not it.
What is the largest single file I can upload here?
50 GB per file. The browser checks the size before the upload starts, so an oversized file is refused immediately rather than halfway. A longer piece can go up as separate reels. For a camera-original handoff measured in terabytes, a per-gigabyte courier is the better tool, and the last section of this page says so plainly.
Why can my client stream some masters and not others?
Because the viewer's browser decides, not a platform rule. There is no codec allowlist here and no transcode step anywhere. Browser-decodable codecs such as H.264, HEVC and AV1 stream at whatever bitrate you uploaded. ProRes 422, ProRes 4444 and DNxHR are hosted for download rather than streamed. Camera RAW is never streamed at all; finish to HEVC or ProRes first. 8K plays when the viewer's own hardware decodes it.
Can I put a password on the link?
Yes, on every plan including the free Starter one. There are five visibility modes: Private, Password, Unlisted, Public and Embed only. The password is checked on the server before the page renders, the code itself never travels back to the browser, and attempts are rate limited to 20 per IP address per hour. You can change or remove the password without changing the URL.
What happens if my upload drops halfway through a 40 GB file?
The file goes up in 10 MB parts, each with up to 60 attempts, across parallel lanes that start at three, rise to six on clean parts and halve when the line degrades. Moving around inside the app does not interrupt it. A reload or a closed laptop does: the browser has thrown the bytes away. Progress is remembered and a resume banner lists the interrupted file, so you re-drop the same file and it continues from the last finished part rather than from zero.
Does the client have to create an account to watch?
No. At most they type a code you gave them. There is no platform logo or watermark on the player on any plan, free included, and the only logo that can appear is your own, off by default.
Am I billed for how many times the client watches?
No. Storage is the only meter, stated in the Terms, and the pricing page lists unlimited views, uploads and viewers on every plan including free. Storage is what each plan caps: 5 GB free on Starter with one film at a time, 100 GB on Lite, 500 GB on Pro, 1.5 TB hot plus 1 TB cold on Max, 2 TB hot plus 2 TB cold on Vault. A pay-per-gigabyte courier bills the opposite way: MASV charges $0.25 per GB pay as you go, so a client who re-downloads a 40 GB delivery three times is billed three times.
Send the master, not a version of it
Storage is the only meter here. Views, viewers and bandwidth are not counted on any plan, including the free one, and the player streams the exact bytes you uploaded.
Sources
- 1.WeTransfer help center: plan limits, transfers and storage per plan (fetched 5 September 2026)
- 2.WeTransfer: file transfer with video preview, no re-encoding and the 300 MB preview ceiling (fetched 5 September 2026)
- 3.WeTransfer help center: transfer availability and link life (fetched 5 September 2026)
- 4.WeTransfer: the free plan, 3 GB per rolling 30 days and 3-day links (fetched 5 September 2026)
- 5.MASV pricing: pay as you go, subscription tiers and storage rates (fetched 5 September 2026)
- 6.MASV help centre: free storage days depend on the plan, minimum five (fetched 5 September 2026)
- 7.MASV help centre: how long transferred files stay available (fetched 5 September 2026)
- 8.MASV: send file packages of any size, and what recipients see (fetched 5 September 2026)
- 9.Dropbox plans and prices, rendered in Canadian dollars (fetched 5 September 2026)
- 10.Dropbox help centre: Dropbox Transfer size caps and expiry by plan (fetched 5 September 2026)
- 11.Dropbox help centre: upload limitations, 2 TB maximum and the 375 GB browser caveat (fetched 5 September 2026)
- 12.Dropbox help centre: video preview duration and resolution by plan (fetched 5 September 2026)
- 13.Dropbox help centre: file types that preview, and the 100 GB preview ceiling (fetched 5 September 2026)
- 14.Google Drive help: files you can store, up to 5 TB per file (fetched 5 September 2026)
- 15.Google Drive help: playable video formats and the 1920 x 1080 playback ceiling (fetched 5 September 2026)
- 16.Google One plans and prices, rendered in Canadian dollars (fetched 5 September 2026)
- 17.uncompressed.io pricing: plans, storage and unlimited views (product behaviour verified in code 5 September 2026)