Problem With Inaccurate Video Metadata

[MissPaperFarm]

I saw the notification today about adding videos to showcase your products. I would LOVE to do that, but I've been having technical issues with videos since the beginning of the year. This was my first issue that I'm not sure ever got resolved: Permalink 

Since I still had the videos in my image bank, I went ahead and tried adding one to the media section of one of my products, but it was not allowing me to. My video is 18 sec long, as you can see in the info section

But when I tried adding it to the product page, it was grayed out saying the video was shorter than 5 sec long, to which is an inaccurate statement because the video is 18 second long. 

Would it be a good idea to delete the videos I tried uploading last year and re-upload the videos again and try starting this process over?

I really wish to add video but the platform is not working with me 🙈

[Sara_H]

@MissPaperFarm 

Normally when images are grayed out it means the dimensions the problem (know this from old cover photo sizes).

Looking at the dimensions of your video - 404 x 720 - the system is seeing that as too small. I believe the videos should be at least 1080 x 1920 for portrait style

Try resizing and re-uploading

[MissPaperFarm]

Yes, that was the first initial problem I had in January. My video's file is 1080 x 1920 but when I uploaded it to my image bank, it was immediately auto resized to 404 x 720. I never got a response back from that issue, but I will try uploading the videos once again and see what happens. 

[Sara_H]

@MissPaperFarm I've just checked the dimensions of a 1080 x 1080 video I uploaded the other day and that's also been resized to 720 x 720

Perhaps during the upload, Z has to optimize them and reduce the size?  It added to my media manager with no errors so it must be ok.

Try uploading it via the media manager on the product page rather than uploading direct to your images and see if that works

[MissPaperFarm]

I uploaded my video through the media manager on the product page ( just doing some tests) and my 1080 by 1920 video uploaded just fine, it was resized however I was able to add it to the products media section. One problem is that the video I created was intended to be vertical which works better for social media and it appeared horizontal (sideways) on the product page. Therefore I had to delete it. After I rotated the video from horizontal to vertical and tried uploading again, it would not upload at all. Haha, I have to laugh because I can't seem it get this right. I'm going to go look for more Zazzle instructions about videos. 

[Sara_H]

@MissPaperFarm that's why I uploaded a square video - it can't get confused😂

[MissPaperFarm]

I wish I could have cropped it square, but my videos were made specifically for the vertical ratio so it would have cropped a lot out, but I finally found a solution! 

I ended up uploading a video I had recorded from my mobile phone, so it was always at the 1080 x 1920 vertical specs, however, it was an instagram reel so it has the instagram logo on it. That worked! It uploaded just fine. Zazzle doesn't give a lot of info on videos so I don't know if having the Instagram logo on there is a no-no, but if it turns out to be, they can just flag the video and I'll have to make a new one.

Since this worked. I took the video that I was having trouble with and basically did some re-editing and then saved it at the vertical size. That video uploaded fine as well. SO, it appears that the videos need to be created vertical from the get-go. They can't be filmed at 1920 x 1080 (which is usually how they are filmed on DSL cameras not mobile devices) and then flipped to 1080 x 1920, the image bank won't take them. Strange and confusing haha but that's what I've discovered thus far. 

[Sara_H]

@MissPaperFarm I know youtube frowns upon the instagram logo on shorts so you'll have to see how that goes. It would be great to get some best practices from Zazzle as to what is and isn't allowed as far as video sizing goes. Am sure they'll issue some someday. Testing is the best way to go (I learnt not to put any text at the very bottom of the video as the 'view collection' button hides it (that's if it's in a cross sell)