Footage that moves like it's on the same drive
One hour of 4K ProRes 422 is about 220 GB. Cloud transfer was never built for that: hard caps, expiring links, and an upload that must finish before the download can begin. DropLink streams footage peer-to-peer — camera cart to edit bay at LAN speed, and out to remote editors through an encrypted browser link.
Quick answer
DropLink moves video files of any size directly between devices — no cloud upload, no size cap, no subscription. On set or in the studio it saturates the local network (50+ MB/s on modern Wi-Fi, more on gigabit Ethernet) using QUIC with BBR congestion control. For remote deliveries, recipients open a browser link: the file streams through DropLink's relay, encrypted in transit and never stored — or goes direct P2P when both sides have the app. Free on macOS, Windows, iOS and Android.
Where cloud transfer fails a video pipeline
Uploads that outlast the edit
Sending 100 GB through a cloud service means pushing 100 GB up your office uplink, then your editor pulling the same 100 GB back down. Peer-to-peer halves the journey — and inside a facility it skips the internet completely.
Caps that have never met ProRes
Free tiers stop at 2 GB; even paid plans stall per transfer long before a day of dailies. A DropLink transfer has no ceiling — a full shooting day or a finished master is one send.
Compression anxiety
Review platforms recompress; transfer tools with 'optimizations' make editors nervous. DropLink is bit-exact by design: every chunk is verified against a BLAKE3 hash tree as it streams, so what arrives is what you graded.
The versioning ping-pong
Cut, notes, new cut. When every round-trip costs an upload window and a link that expires, iteration slows to the transfer tool's pace. When it's a direct free transfer, you just send.
From card offload to final master
- 01
Dailies off the cart
The DIT laptop and the producer's machine find each other automatically on set Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Footage moves over QUIC at LAN speed — handoffs without shuttling drives around.
- 02
To the editor, wherever they cut
Send footage and project folders to a remote editor through an encrypted link they open in a browser — no account, no app on their side. If the editor installs the free app, transfers go direct P2P between your machines.
- 03
Review rounds at full quality
Send actual ProRes cuts instead of crushed preview files when it matters. There's no cost per transfer, so full-quality iteration is the default, not a luxury.
- 04
Deliver the master, verified
The final master arrives bit-for-bit identical, BLAKE3-verified during the stream — no re-sends because a checksum failed after the fact.
DropLink vs cloud transfer for video
| Feature | DropLink | Cloud transfer |
|---|---|---|
| One hour of 4K ProRes (~220 GB) | One direct transfer | Over every free cap |
| Transfer path | Sender → receiver, one hop | Upload, store, then download |
| Recompression risk | None — bit-exact + BLAKE3 | Depends on the service |
| Editor needs an account | No — browser link | Usually |
| Speed inside a facility | LAN speed (QUIC + BBR) | Internet round-trip anyway |
| End-to-end encryption | Rare, usually paid | |
| Cost at daily volume | Free | Per-seat / per-GB plans |
The pipeline take
Video production is the workload cloud transfer quietly gave up on: files too big, deadlines too tight, margins too thin for per-gigabyte pricing. Direct peer-to-peer transfer with verified integrity matches the shape of the problem — DropLink implements it, for free, on every platform your team already uses.
Production teams ask
How fast is it really for big footage files?
On a local network, expect 50+ MB/s on modern Wi-Fi and substantially more on gigabit Ethernet — DropLink uses QUIC with BBR congestion control and saturates what the network gives it. Across the internet, speed is bounded by the slower side's connection, but there's only one trip instead of an upload plus a download.
Can I send an entire project folder?
Yes — drag the folder in and it's transferred with everything inside. No manual zipping or splitting to dodge size caps.
Does my editor need DropLink?
Not to receive: share a browser link and the download streams from your machine through DropLink's relay, never stored. With the app on both sides you also get direct P2P transfers and two-way sending.
Is footage stored on DropLink's servers at any point?
No. App-to-app transfers are peer-to-peer; if a direct path fails, an encrypted relay forwards packets it cannot read. Browser downloads stream through DropLink's relay without ever being written to disk. In both cases there is no server-side copy of your footage.
Why not just use a review platform like Frame.io?
Review platforms are for annotating compressed proxies — and they're great at that. DropLink is for moving the real files: sources, project folders, masters. Most teams use both, and stop paying transfer overage for the heavy lifting.