How to Send HD Quality Videos on WhatsApp
Don’t mess with the resolution of your video or waste your time playing with WhatsApp settings to get it right.
IN THIS GUIDE, YOU’RE GOING TO READ THE 3 OPTIONS TO SEND MULTIPLE PHOTO ON WHATSAPP:
1. Send HD Videos via WhatsApp with Smash
WhatsApp is one of the world’s most popular messaging applications. Every day, billions of people trade chat messages, texts, photos, GIFs and videos using Meta’s green app, and today it’s a tool that businesses have come to rely on for reaching customers just as much as a consumer favorite. We’ve previously explained how to send videos on WhatsApp but sending a HD video is another thing altogether. With larger file sizes, better resolution, and a variety of file formats and types, sharing a high-quality video using WhatsApp can be a challenge. In the article below, we explain exactly how to send a HD video using WhatsApp, explore all the constraints you need to keep in mind, and offer three alternatives to the stock-standard WhatsApp interface to help you send the files that WhatsApp won’t.
How to Send HD Videos on WhatsApp for iPhone
Sending a file with WhatsApp on an iPhone is simple, just follow the steps below:
Open WhatsApp and either start or open the conversation or chat you want to share with
Press the + button in the bottom left corner of the screen
Select Photos from the menu
Choose your HD Video from the image gallery to share
Tap the HD icon, select HD Quality and then tap done
You can also use the WhatsApp Settings area to set HD quality as your default for shared video.
Don’t forget to watch the ‘ticks’ or ‘checkmarks’ alongside the chat window to ensure your HD Video is safely securely sent and received.
How to Send HD Videos on WhatsApp for Android
Sending a file via WhatsApp on an Android phone is similarly straightforward – here’s how:
Open WhatsApp and either start or open the conversation or chat you want to share with
Tap on the paperclip icon
Select the Gallery icon
Choose a HD Video to share
Tap the HD icon and select HD quality
Click the send button to share the file
As for iOS users, you should keep an eye on the ‘ticks’ or ‘checkmarks’ to ensure that your HD video transfer finishes safe and sound, and setting your application to default to HD quality can be done via the settings.
WhatsApp Constraints on HD Video Transfers
Sending HD videos via WhatsApp is secure and it’s pretty easy – once you have done it one time, it’s basically ‘tap-select-send’. But as intuitive as sending a high-quality video with WhatsApp might be, there are a couple of constraints you need to be aware of.
1. File Size Limits
It’s probably no surprise to anyone that file sizes today are bigger than ever. Unfortunately, WhatsApp puts limits on the size of the videos it will transfer via its application and the hard limit is 2GB. Will your smartphone photo album have many images bigger than that? Probably not. But if you are transferring a HD video you will quickly run into trouble. With a 2GB hard ceiling on file size, WhatsApp alone might not be what you’re looking for.
2. File Format Limits
WhatsApp will handle many common video formats – but there are some it won’t transfer. The following are just fine:
| MP4 | 3GP | H.264 and MPEG-4 but only if using the AAC or AC3 audio codec |
| AVI | MKV | |
| FLV | MOV |
If your HD video is encoded differently, you’re out of luck sending it through WhatsApp natively. A 4K video encoded with H.265 or VC9 – both pretty common for the 4K format – are not supported by WhatsApp natively. If you’re transferring a 4K video like that you’ll need an alternative to the standard WhatsApp message bubble.
3. File Quality
WhatsApp is capable of sending a HD video, but it is not capable of sending every HD video. In fact, it might be more accurate to say that WhatsApp will deliver a HD quality video, but it won’t necessarily be the HD quality you hope it is. At best, WhatsApp will send a 720p version of your file and while this is HD, it might not be the 1080p you are trying to send – and you can forget about 4K, 8k, or 12K video quality. WhatsApp explains this as a strategy to balance HD quality against bandwidth and device storage, but if you are trying to send anything beyond base-level HD quality video, you’re going to see it degraded.
So, how do you avoid these constraints on your WhatsApp sharing? Here are three alternatives you might try.
1. Send HD Videos via WhatsApp with Smash
Smash is a file transfer service that is built from the ground up to transfer large files like HD video. Unlike WhatsApp, there are no limits on the file size, the file format, the quality of the video, or the resolution of the video that you’re sending. The file you send is exactly the file that is downloaded on the other end of the transfer: no degradation in quality, no compression, and no adaptations for bandwidth that negatively impact your video.
Uploading your video to the Smash portal is easy and in seconds you’ll have a URL that you can share with anyone on WhatsApp. It’s simple, it’s fast, and it’s free – here’s how you do it:
Go to the Smash website
Click on the icon in the middle of the screen, select your file, and upload
Add your email address, add password protection if you like, and then copy the unique URL
Paste the URL into your WhatsApp chat and tap to send it
As soon as that URL arrives the high-quality video is available to download. If your video is a MP4, MOV or M4V file, your recipient will also be able to preview that video before they download it. Smash is end-to-end encrypted, and you can even add additional password protection if your video is confidential or sensitive.
2. Zip and Send HD Videos via WhatsApp
If you want to maintain the quality and resolution of the video you are sending but it is just a little big or in a non-supported format, you might be able to compress the video and send it as a zip file. Creating a zip file is easy and it is a function that is built into common operating systems for PCs and Macs Here’s how you do it:
Find the file that you want to zip on your device
Compress the file, then attach it as per the instructions above for iPhone and Android
If you send a zip file you don’t change the underlying file. When your recipient unzips (decompresses) the file on their device, the HD video will be the same quality, length, and format as it was on your machine or device. It can be an elegant solution to the WhatsApp constraints, but there remain a couple of drawbacks.
First, many high-quality video files don’t get all that much smaller when they are zipped. If you have a video that is already compressed, you can’t expect a large additional reduction in the size of the file. As a result, you might still struggle to get under the 2GB limit.
Second, the process of compressing and decompressing the file can lead to a corrupted video. It won’t happen every time, but it is common enough that the internet is awash with tales of zip files that delivered nothing but frustration for sender and receiver alike.
3. Send HD Videos via WhatsApp with Google Drive
If you want to avoid the problems of compression, then you might turn to Google Drive. Using Google Drive, you can upload a file to the Google servers and generate a single URL that can be copied and pasted into a WhatsApp chat message. As you’ll see, it’s only a couple of clicks or taps from upload to send to send:
Go to the Google Drive website and log in with your Google Account
Select Upload and then select the file on your desktop or mobile device, and click/tap OK
When the file has completed uploading, select the file, right click, and select Share
Click the Link icon to copy and paste it into a WhatsApp message
Google Drive is secure, and it is fast. It’s also a name that people recognize and receiving a HD video via a Google Drive download link won’t scare anyone away. Yet it’s not perfect, either, and there are a couple of cons to keep in the front of your mind.
First, Google Drive and other file storage services have hard limits on the space they’ll offer for storage before charging you monthly or annually. At 15GB on Google Drive, for example, you’re out of luck. This means that, with a few 4K videos, you’re going to be paying for those transfers or regularly spending time cleaning up your Google Drive folders.
Second, once you share the URL, your file remains on the Google Drive taking up space on a server. That server is connected to the internet 24/7 and indefinitely, which means it is burning just to stock a file you probably only wanted to send one time. That’s far from environmentally friendly.
Third, unlike Smash, your recipient can’t preview the file they are downloading – in other words, they’ll see a URL, click it, and hope the file they want is the same 10GB file they are downloading to their iPhone over a slow 4G connection. Cross your fingers and hope, especially if your mobile data package is limited or expensive.
Conclusion: The Best Way to Transfer HD Video via WhatsApp
So, what is the best way to send a HD video with WhatsApp without worrying about the size of the file you’re sending, the format of the file you’re sending, or having WhatsApp mess with the resolution and degrade the quality?
Simple: choose Smash.
With Smash it doesn’t matter how big the file is, you’ll be able to upload and send it via a simple URL in WhatsApp. It also doesn’t matter what format your HD video is in – Smash will send any file with equal ease. With Smash, the quality of your video is never degraded so if you recorded in 1080p, 4K, 8K, or even 12K, you could send that vide file without any problems. To top it off, the video is not stored on a server indefinitely (that’s good for the planet) and its entirely free to use for HD video files of any size (that’s good for your wallet).
Smash is available for iOS and Android, as a native app for Mac, as an API for developers, and always through the web portal at fromsmash.com. Try Smash today to send a HD video via WhatsApp and see for yourself why you’ll never waste time and energy sending a degraded video through the native transfer system ever again.
Send HD Quality Videos on WhatsApp with Smash
Use Smash, it’s no file size limits, simple, fast, secure and free.
Frequently Asked Questions
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No. With Smash there are no file size constraints: if you can create it and upload it, you can send it on WhatsApp with Smash.
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Yes! Smash encrypts resting files through AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) 256 bits standard and uses the SSL/TLS (Secure Sockets Layer/ Transport Layer Security) protocols to protect data during the transfer between the application and the servers.
But with Smash, file security doesn’t end there: you can add password protection to your file transfer, too, even on the free tiers!
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Not all HD videos are the same. WhatsApp will transfer video at a maximum of 720p and, if your video is higher quality than that, it will deliberately degrade the quality and resolution of your video to that level. That means no 1080p, no 4K, and no 8K or 12K video. Sure, it’s still HD technically, but it is not the file that you wanted to transfer, and the difference is resolution quality can be marked.
