Workflows 5 min read
Video Too Large for Email: Attachment Limits and a Working Compression Flow
Every mail provider caps attachments: Gmail 25 MB, Outlook 20 MB (34 MB for business tiers), corporate Exchange often less — and base64 encoding adds ~37% overhead to whatever you attach. The reliable flow is trim first, compress to target second.
The flow
- Trim the video to what the recipient actually needs — duration is the strongest size lever.
- Compress with a target size of cap minus overhead: for Gmail, aim 17–18 MB.
- Prefer 720p over 1080p for mail — screens it is watched on are small and the savings are large.
- Strip audio if the content is screen-only; it saves 10–15%.
When email is the wrong transport
Above roughly 20 minutes of footage, even 720p gets ugly at mail-friendly bitrates. A cloud drive link preserves quality and spares both inboxes; mail compression is for short clips, not archives.