Your Video Is “Under the Limit” and Still Gets Rejected: How to Pick the Right Target Size
You check the file and it says 24 MB. The limit says 25 MB. The upload still fails. Or you run a compressor three times with different quality settings and get 31 MB, then 12 MB, then something that looks like it was filmed through a screen door. Both problems have the same fix: decide the final size first, aim a little under the real ceiling, and let the encoder work backward from that number. Here is how I pick the number, and then a quick run on a real clip with VidSmaller (full disclosure: it's one of the tools I make). The limit you see isn't the limit you get The number a platform publishes is rarely the number your file has to beat. Email. Attachments travel base64-encoded, which makes them roughly 37% bigger on the wire. Gmail measures the encoded message, so a 25 MB video turns into a ~34 MB message. About 18 MB of actual file is what clears it. There's a longer explainer on why Gmail's 25 MB really means about 18 . Outlook.com stops at 20 MB, and Exchange wo...