I rented a movie, watched it and I copied it to the computer so I can watch it again later. But since I am in another country right now using another computer, I need to send the files to my own computer in USA. I decided to upload it on some server but it's too big! And I can't send it to myself via e-mail because the files are just toooo big. What can I do? I don't want to lose the movie files. And I don't have a CD/VCD burner here. Is there a site for just uploading big files like video clips or movies? Or can I compress the .dat files? Something like that??? Please someone answer me! thanks!

-- Cynthia Cyns (suga4me@hotmail.com), August 20, 2003

Answers

Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do. There are no public sites for uploading files like you suggest. DAT files are pretty compressed as it is. While it is possible to compress them further, it's one of those things that if you have to ask, you're not going to be able to do it. The process is very involved and would require you to tie up the PC you are using for a very long time to re-encode the video. And I can assure you that the final result would be of very very poor quality. Have you considered just buying the film? Since it's a VCD (it must be since you said it has DAT files) it should only cost a few bucks. Surely you can afford that.

-- Root (root@yahoo.moc), August 21, 2003.

Technically it seems that the only way left for you to backup is to use hundreds of floppy disks. You can use the winzip to partition the big file to many small ones. You will probably need eight hundred and some disks since usually one movie has to VCD's. However if I were you I would rather buy the movie.

-- shuo_huang (shuo_huang@yahoo.com), August 21, 2003.