We have had some trouble downloading videos in the PD sessions using Zamzar and here’s why: Zamzar has a limit of 100MB on their free page. This means that if the video is over that size, it will not download. Unfortunately it does not seem to do the helpful thing and send you a message that says ‘this is over the limit’ it just seems to work and then sends you a video that plays for three seconds then blacks out.

How can I tell if my video is over 100MB?

It is a bit tricky to work out how big the movie is. I had a look at two movies that I have, one a grainy small clip and one a larger nicer vid, that are both about 2 mins and they were thirtysomething and sixtysomething MBs respectively.

Have a look at the video:

• Is it over three minutes? It’s probably too big.
• Is it high quality? It is probably too big.

And try downloading it. If it doesn’t work then it is too big.

But I want it!

If you really want the video and it is too big, you can sign up for an account with Zamzar (or lean on your fac to do so) which increases the size of the videos that you can download ($7/month=200MB, $16/month=400 & $49/month=1GB).

Alternatively, you can trawl the internet for other sites that download videos. There is a list of some of them from Mashable here. Unfortunately, many do not convert the file at the same time so you would have to convert them yourselves. Which is easy. Just ask me.

Happy downloading!