Technical
Guest videos: what works, what jams, what helps
Videos are the first thing that breaks in photo apps. Why that is, which limits are real, and how to get your guests through the upload.
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Photos are easy. Videos are where guest photo apps fail in rows, and because that usually only shows up at the party, it pays to know beforehand what actually breaks.
Why videos jam
Size. A minute of phone video weighs between 60 and 400 megabytes depending on the resolution; a photo is two to five. So a single guest uploading three minutes of dance floor sends more data than fifty guests with ten photos each.
On top of that there is a limit you cannot see: the networks between phone and server only accept a single request up to a certain size. For us that is 100 megabytes. A 300 MB video is therefore rejected on the way, not by the server. Most of the "upload failed" reports you find about services like this hang on exactly that.
Which is why we cut large files into parts before sending and reassemble them on the server. To the guest it looks like a normal upload with a progress bar; without that detour no video over 100 MB would ever arrive.
The limits that apply here
- 1 GB per video, in every plan. That is roughly five to ten minutes of phone video.
- No limit on the number. Not per guest, not in total.
- No colour look on videos. Photo looks apply to photos; a video is not re-graded.
After the upload every video is converted into a format every browser plays and gets a preview frame. That happens in the background on a lane of its own, so half a gigabyte of video does not hold up the other guests' photos. For a long video it can take a few minutes. It appears in the gallery as soon as it is done.
What to tell your guests
- Film short. Ten to thirty seconds. That is not only a data question: nobody later watches a four-minute pan across a dance floor, and the Live Wall only shows an excerpt anyway.
- Upload on Wi-Fi if there is any. Otherwise large videos run through your guests' data allowance. Some abort because of it without saying so.
- Leave the tab open until the bar is through. Switching apps mid-upload pauses it on some phones.
- A failure is not a problem. Failed files stay in the list and are retried on the next tap. Nothing is lost.
And if something still will not upload?
Two causes cover almost everything: the file is larger than a gigabyte. Then only trimming helps. Or the upload window has ended, in which case the page says so explicitly and you can extend it. As the host you keep uploading anyway, well after the guests' window closes.
