Where is the video? (And if so, how many?)
An acquaintance asks me: She recently sent me this video and she’s sorry about it, she sent more videos with it and she didn’t want that at all. How can you stop the fact that they always – unintentionally! – send so many videos, she actually only wanted to send one video! There are always so many videos that it makes her very uncomfortable.
At first I don’t understand your question. Then let’s look at what she sent me: That was a link to a video on YouTube. I explain to her that she only sent me the link to a video and ask if in other cases she might have sent me the link to a playlist?
No, she would only want to send one video, but there are always a lot of them. We keep looking, and at some point I notice that her YouTube app on the smartphone has the (probably standard) setting to play other “similar” videos when a video is finished.
I try to explain to her that she doesn’t send the videos, just the link to a video on YouTube. And that what is then played back depends on the settings on the receiving device. She’s only half-satisfied with that, and I notice that I’m not really able to clearly explain the conceptual difference between sending a file and sending a link.
A little later I talk to André and Markus about it, and it becomes even clearer to me that and why my naive distinction between “file” and “link” is not correct at all – which of course makes the whole matter much more complicated:
André: “If you send a video by email, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the video actually comes to the recipient’s computer. With GMail I could also imagine that the video stays in the cloud and is only displayed on the recipient’s computer. Then you actually just send links.”
Markus: “Although when you watch a YouTube video, the video is also downloaded. Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to watch it. At least part of the video”
André: “Yes… whatever comes into the browser. Is it a rendered form of the video, or the video itself? YouTube converts all uploaded videos into its own format. Is there one format in which the video is saved and another in which it is displayed? Who knows.”
Markus: “In any case, I find it understandable that people have difficulty distinguishing between the two: sending a link and a file when you see the same thing.”
Andre: “Yes. It’s really not that easy to tell where a photo or video actually “is” because you can just look at the things that are in the cloud.”
Markus: “It would be nice if it didn’t matter because there would always be enough bandwidth and storage space.”
(Molinarius, Markus, André)