One address, two people, two outcomes

What the other person gets when you send the address

An address is an instruction to go and ask a server for something. When your message arrives, the person opens it, the page loads for them, and the video plays if the page agrees to play it for that particular visitor.

Everything about their experience is decided on the far end. Whether they see it, at what quality, with which advertisements in front of it, and for how long it stays available are all the publisher's to change. You handed over directions, and directions depend on the destination still being there.

What they get when you send the file

A file is the video itself. Once it is on their device it plays with no connection, at the resolution the row you chose was encoded at, with no page around it and nothing that expires. They can move it, keep it, and open it in a year.

The cost is size and delivery. A file has to travel: an attachment limit on email, a chat app compressing it into something smaller, or a shared folder they have to be given access to. The row size tells you in advance which of those routes the file will survive.

Why an address that works for you fails for them

This is the part that surprises people, because the link is plainly working when they send it. The address is the same for both parties; the conditions attached to it are not.

Four causes account for nearly all of it, and each one has a plain signature at the other end.

• You are signed in and they are not. A members-only page, a private account, or a closed group serves them a sign-in form instead of a video.
• The address carries a session that belongs to you. Media addresses issued by a host frequently include a signature and an expiry, so the same string handed to somebody else is refused.
• The publisher restricts the video by country, and the other person is somewhere it is not served.
• The post came down between your message and their tap, which returns a page saying the video is unavailable.

Working out which one it is

Ask the other person to describe the screen rather than to say it did not work. A sign-in form points at an account condition. A message about the video being unavailable in their country points at a region restriction. An expired or forbidden notice points at an address that was only ever valid for one session.

Test the same address yourself in a private browsing window. If it plays there, your account was not the reason and the cause is on their side. If a sign-in form appears for you too, they were never going to see it.

The route that removes the guessing

When the person on the other end has to see the video, hand them the file. Paste the address into the box above, press Analyze, take a row whose size suits how you will send it, and send that file instead of the address.

Pick the row deliberately here, because the file is going somewhere you cannot see. A middle row travels through mail and chat with fewer obstacles than the top row and looks the same on a phone. A large file goes through a shared folder rather than an attachment.

Several people, one video

For a group, download once and distribute that single file. Everybody then holds the same copy at the same quality, and nobody is turned away by an account condition or a region rule you cannot see from where you are sitting.

A free account carries three downloads a day and a 150 MB ceiling on any single file, which suits one person saving a few videos rather than a standing distribution habit. Paying for Pro lifts the daily count, lifts the ceiling, and takes the advertising off the page.

What you are entitled to pass on

Sending a file removes the publisher from the exchange, and the licence on the material stays exactly where it was. Somebody else's work is still theirs after it lands in your Downloads folder.

Share your own recordings freely. Share other people's within whatever their terms allow, and send the address instead when passing the file around would be handing out copies of something you have no right to distribute.

Related pages

• What counts as a usable link
• Reading an address to see what it points at
• Addresses that forward before they arrive
• Where the saved copy lives afterwards