Believe it or not there was a time when burning DVD’s was the only way to share files with players. You’d arrive at training with 20-30 DVD’s and start handing them out to players. The DVD’s got lobed into a bag and you wondered if they ever made it out. The whole process added hours to the workload and slowed down the entire feedback process. Now we can have entire games online by the time players are showered, so they can watch on the bus home. I’m a big believer in life that you get what you pay for but most people are on a budget and want to find free way’s to get the ball-rolling.
So here is a list of 5 free-tools you can use to share your videos.
1. Dropbox
Dropbox is a basic file storage service in the cloud. It’s very similar to the kind of interface you’d expect from a desktop computer, with the ability to arrange your files into folders and sub-folders as you wish.
You can simply create a folder and share with players or the back-room team or both. There is no limit on the number of folders you can have – so one per player is perfectly fine.
Free Storage: 2GB
Bonus Scheme: For each person you invite to Dropbox who joins, which will normally be through sharing a folder, you receive an extra 500MB of free storage up to 16GB.
Paid Features: Dropbox offers only one paid tier for consumers: 100GB for £7.99 per month.
2. Google Drive & 3. One Drive
OneDrive and Google Drive offer many of the same features as Dropbox, although they’re both integrated with the Microsoft and Google ecosystems respectively.
As Google Drive and One Drive are integrated with operating system and office packages, there is a lot more integration with your existing products and there are a few advantages to this. Using something like Google forms can be an excellent and seamless way to survey your players.
Free Storage: 15GB – Google Drive and OneDrive.
Bonus Scheme (One Drive only): OneDrive offers a recruitment incentive bonus: recruit a friend to the service and you’ll receive 500MB of extra storage up to a maximum of 5GB (which equates to signing up 10 friends). You can also earn an extra 3GB of storage when you activate your camera roll backup on iOS, Android, Windows or Windows phone to save photos to OneDrive automatically.
Paid Features:
- OneDrive offers two additional tiers to its free service. You can get 100GB for £1.99 per month, or 200GB for £3.99 per month.
- Google Drive, meanwhile, has five premium subscriptions, starting at $1.99 per month before tax for 100GB and going up to a wallet-wounding $299.99 per month before tax for 30TB.
4. We-Transfer
We-Transfer acts a bit like an email service for big (2gb) files. You simply go to wetransfer.com, upload your file and input the destination email address. The maximum file size is 2GB at a time but you can repeat the service over and over. But this wouldn’t be ideal if you were trying to send a match to every player. This service seems more appropriate for one-off transfers.
Free Sotrage: 2 GB
Bonus Scheme: None
Paid Features: €120 per year to send files as big as 10GB
5. YouTube
When you upload a video, by default it’s set as a “Public” video, which means that anybody can view it. You can easily change the privacy settings of your videos. Choose it while you’re uploading the video in the “Privacy Settings”. A private video can only be seen by you and the users you select. The video won’t appear on your channel or search results and will be invisible to other users. This video explains how to make your video’s private.
Free Sotrage: Unlimited
Bonus Scheme: N/A
YouTube has two big advantage over the other services.
- With Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive and We-Transfer you upload the raw files and that’s what sits in the cloud. Why does this matter? It means that I need to be aware of what the format is and possible upload 2 different versions of the same file – say for IOS and Android or MAC and PC. As video formats can vary quite a lot and not all formats can be played on all devices. It’s just something to be aware of and can trip you up from time to time.
- Another issue is streaming the video files. YouTube converts the file to a web friendly version(s). So if I’m in the country side with poor internet service YouTube will serve me the best available file that my internet can be handle – it makes that calculation in real time. Lets say I have uploaded a full HD video on one of the other services – that is what will get served to the user at the other end, regardless of their broadband speed.
