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Uncompressed footage from a DV camcorder adds up to around 13GB of data per hour of recording. Even a three-minute video will be hundreds of megabytes in size, so it’s really no surprise that your clip took so long to upload.

You’re right that compressing it prior to upload is the way forward. Most videoediting tools will offer a way to do this, but if you don’t have anything installed, then Handbrake is a great free option download it from http://handbrake.fr. Once installed, launch Handbrake, click the Source button, followed by Open File, then use the Open dialogue box to choose your video – then click Open. In

the Output Settings section, check that the Container dropdown menu is set to MP4 and tick the Web Optimized box. Click Start and the video will be compressed, with the smaller file placed in the same

folder as the original.

If it’s still too large, then repeat the above steps, but this time click the Video tab and move the Quality slider a little to the left. Click Start to compress the file anew. Obviously the more you move the slider to the left, the worse the resulting video will look  so use trial and error to figure out the right trade-off between size/quality and upload time.