Putting Video Files In Rar?

I want to begin posting video files. Some are in the avi. format, others in the wmv. format. How do I put these up for the easiest download by other members? Rar seems to be popular. I have NO idea how to put them in rar.

My vids are anywhere from 15 minutes to 30 minutes. Advice please Len

Howdy, Len!

Welcome to the posting world. Don't let it intimidate you...if a stoner idiot like me can figure it out, you should have no problems.

First, you should be aware that the actual length of the videos you're posting will not strictly be relevant...it will be the size of the video file that determines whether or not you have to rar up a file. (I have 30 minute vids that are only 15Mb, because the quality sucks. 30 minutes of DVD quality can run well into the hundreds of MB.)

Most hosting sites have size restrictions on any one file they'll let you upload. For Rapidshare, my host of choice, that limit is 200MB. Meaning that if I have a 700MB movie to upload, I'm going to have to split/rar it into 3 sections of 200MB and one section of 100MB, and then post four separate files.

For you, this would mean the following:

Anything under 200MB would not need to be rar'd at all...you could just post the .avi or .wmv as-is.

Anything over 200MB, you're going to need to split up. If you do not already have Winrar, I'd suggest googling and downloading it. Once installed, simply right-click on the file you want to split, then look for the option "Add to archive." A box will come up: "Archive Name and Parameters." The name of the archive will read whatever the video name is, but you can change it in the text underneath the title bar.

At the bottom left of this box is a field that says "Split to Volume, bytes." Here, you can enter a number which tells it how large you want each chunk of the split. In the above example, I wanted 200MB chunks, so I would put "200,000,000" in that field. Hit "OK" and watch the magic happen!

The program will place the split parts of your movie in the same folder as the original, so now all you'd have to do is upload the parts, and post your links!

Have you picked a file host yet? Make sure you read the rules here about which ones are acceptable!

There are folks here who are very good with photoshop and screenshots, and could probably give you a fabulous visual tutorial on Winrar and posting. Tragically, I am not one of those folks, so I at least hope my ramblings were somewhat helpful. Good luck!

Thanks Agent420 for your helpful and thorough response. I downloaded the evaluation trial program of Winrar and will soon be posting my first vid. The part about splitting the vid into bytes was very helpful. Thanks again! Len

The most important things have already been said, so let me just add a hint: don't use any compression, just store the files into the rar-file. I gues there's a light compression given by default. This might not bother anyone, but storing is the fastest way (and the videos are already compressed by their video codec). Sometimes you find rar-files posted that will take you minutes to expand: these are strogly compressed files which are not even smaller than the originals.
Deactivate compression in the settings, so you don't have to change it everytime you add a file.
You can also disable: "add recovery information": in most cases an error in a rar-files comes from a broken download, then this recovery information won't help much (if it's only 1%), just download the file again.
Also disbale something called "add authentification infomation", this is only usefulif you use the rar-files on your own computer, it normally gives an error if the downloader opens it (but it works anyway)
These settings can also be permanently disabled in the options/settings.