Add videos to a gallery

Videos sit in the gallery next to the photos. They are included on every paid plan. The Free plan is photos only.

Upload a video

Upload it like a photo: drag it onto the page or use Upload Photos. MP4, MOV, M4V, MKV, WebM and other common formats work, up to 30 GB each. Videos upload one at a time in resumable pieces, so a dropped connection costs a few seconds, not the whole file.

Processing

After the upload, the tile shows Processing… for a few minutes while the video is prepared for streaming. You get an email when it is ready. To turn that email off, go to Settings → Notifications → Video ready. The tile starts playing as soon as processing finishes. If processing fails, the tile says so and offers Retry.

The couple never sees a video until it has finished processing.

What the couple sees

A tile with a play button and the video’s length. It streams at whatever quality their connection supports, so nobody downloads 20 GB to watch a highlight reel. It plays full screen from the lightbox.

Video controls

Open the video’s ⋯ menu:

• Choose thumbnail… Scrub to any frame. That frame becomes the video’s tile image everywhere.
• Use as cover video. The gallery’s cover plays this video silently on a loop behind the couple’s names. The still cover photo stays as the fallback in emails, previews and anywhere motion does not belong.
• Delete video. Removes it and frees its storage.

Videos can also be hidden, made couple-only, moved between sections, favorited and shared in a set, the same as photos.

Downloading a video

The download button on a video offers two sizes:

• Original file. Exactly what you uploaded, full quality.
• Web version. A 1080p MP4 that is much smaller. A 389 MB original came out at 79 MB. Good for phones and for sending on.

Two switches control this: the gallery’s Allow downloads setting, and Allow video downloads in the gallery’s Settings → Downloads.

Videos are never included in the ZIP from Download all, because a 20 GB file does not belong in an archive. A video is downloaded from its own tile, in the gallery or in a shared set. Videos are never watermarked.

If a video will not process

The usual cause is bitrate, not file size. A video above roughly 200 Mbps cannot be prepared for streaming. A camera-native or lightly compressed 4K export can exceed that even when the file is small. Export a delivery version from your editor (H.264 or H.265) and upload that.

FOCL checks the bitrate before the upload starts, so you find out in seconds instead of after a multi-gigabyte transfer. The tile tells you when bitrate is the reason.

A gallery can be videos only

Nothing requires photos. If there are no photos to choose a cover from, use Change cover → Upload a cover to use any image from your computer. Counts throughout the studio say “3 videos” rather than counting them as photos.

Storage

A video counts against your storage by its file size, the same as photos. Streaming costs you nothing extra, no matter how many times it is watched.