We have you set when it comes to uploading your favorite videos for sharing, displaying, and safekeeping. Looking to sell your videos to earn a profit? You can with our Portfolio and Pro plans.
Videos can be uploaded with any SmugMug plan, up to 20 minutes in length and in full HD (1920x1080). The maximum file size allowed for any video is 3 GB.
Note: We don't keep a copy of the original video you upload, and we never upsize your videos; we only store and make high-quality display copies in 1280p (720p) and 1920p (1080p). If you upload a video that isn't in one of these supported sizes, we'll save it as the next available size. And if your video is smaller than 1280p (720p), we'll store the original size of your video.
Prepare videos for upload.
We recommend using our HTML5 uploader available in supported browsers, and we offer several ways for you to upload your videos. We can't convert your videos as fast as we can prepare photos for display, so it could be a while before a video is visible in your gallery. After you upload, continue to visit other areas of your site, and we'll have your videos processed shortly.
Playback requirements.
Due to different playback sizes and thousands of hardware configurations, we can't tell you exactly what you'll need to make a video play successfully on your system. Running applications and background processes can cause playback degradation, so be sure to shut down any unneeded applications if a problem occurs.
Network requirements.
Most broadband Internet connections will be able to handle HD playback. For slower connections, you may see stops or stutters as the video loads, or you may see the video take a bit longer to buffer as it starts. Check the status bar to see if the playback marker is catching up to the load indicator. If it is, pause the video to allow the video to finish loading. Also, shut down any unneeded applications that may be using the network connection.
Accepted video formats.
We can handle a variety of video formats, including h.264, .mov, .AVI, most .mpeg formats, .m4v, and .mts.
Want to preserve your frame rates? We're able to do so for videos at or below 30fps, but any higher than that and the video will convert down to 30fps.
At this time we're unable to decode and re-encode 5.1 channels of audio (surround sound). SmugMug videos need to have 0, 1, or 2 channels of audio or things get wonky. DVI ADPCM, Mono, and 44,100 kHz also don't play well with our system.
Videos in .mpg format are an older format and aren't supported. WMV files may contain some form of Windows Media Video, which we don't support. They can also contain a variety of codecs (audio and video), some of which we can support, but some we can't. The same is true of .MOV files. But we do support most codecs and formats.
Note: The minimum resolution accepted for video uploads is 320x240.
Format videos.
Not sure if we support your video format? No worries! 99% of the time we can convert whatever you upload to the h.264 format that works on iPods, iPhones, AppleTV, PlayStations, and many other consumer devices.
What comes off your camera could be bloated and take a long time to upload, though. Whether you want to speed up uploading or need to convert your video to a supported format, you might consider using your favorite video editor to convert to h.264 before uploading. Reach out anytime to a Support Hero if you have questions about converting your videos.
Preview image.
We'll pick a frame partway into your video to represent the video in your gallery, but if you'd prefer to display a different image, you can replace it.
After adding the video to your site, navigate to the video, then click the wrench icon to open the photo tools menu. Select "Replace Preview" from the fly-out menu. It's important to note that your preview image needs to be in a JPG format and has to match the exact pixel dimensions of your video.
Replace a video.
We offer a replace feature for photos, but at this time it doesn't work with videos. For now, you'll need to upload a new version of the video and delete the old one.
Rotate a video.
Videos can't be rotated after they're uploaded to SmugMug. Any rotating will need to be done using video-editing software before you upload your video to SmugMug.