Publishing video

If your plan includes it, Videos gives your website a video section at /videos: videos, playlists and series, a page for each video, and a player of your own. A video plays from your media library, from a YouTube or Vimeo link, or has both. Library videos need video uploads on your plan, and their minutes stored and watched go on your website's bill; YouTube and Vimeo links cost nothing extra.

Add a video

1. 1Under Videos, press New video and give it a title.
2. 2Choose a video From your media library, paste a YouTube or Vimeo link, or both. With a link, Fill in from the link brings in its title, description, poster and length.
3. 3Add a Poster, a summary, tags and a description. Lines in the description such as 12:34 Interview become chapters in the player.
4. 4Publish it, or give it a Publish date still to come to schedule it.

Playlists and series

Under Playlists, press New playlist and pick a kind: a playlist is any set of videos in the order you choose, and a Series shows episode numbers. The watch page plays the next video in the list.

Who gets the library copy

When a video has both a library copy and a YouTube or Vimeo link, Settings → Who watches library videos decides who gets the library copy: everyone, Signed-in visitors or Paying members. Everyone else gets the YouTube or Vimeo copy, or a lock when there is none. That spends your watched minutes on the viewers who matter most.

Bringing your YouTube channel

1. 1Open Import, paste the address of a channel, a playlist or one video, and press Look up.
2. 2Choose whether to publish videos as they arrive, whether to Check daily for new videos, and whether to Also make it a playlist here.
3. 3Start the import. It carries on in the background, so you can leave the page.

Private, live and non-embeddable videos are skipped, and a video your site already has is never imported twice. If YouTube's daily quota runs out, the import pauses and carries on by itself after midnight Pacific time. VPress's shared YouTube key works with no setup; for a quota of your own, add your YouTube API key in Settings.

The player

The player resumes where each viewer stopped, shows chapters, floats in a corner when the viewer scrolls away, and starts the next video after a short countdown — switch that off with Play the next video by itself in Settings. For a library video, Captions → Write captions has captions written from the speech, in the languages Cloudflare Stream can transcribe.

Likes, comments and Watch later

If your plan includes it, signed-in viewers can like videos, comment, save them to Watch later, and find their history and Continue watching in their account. Comments take one level of replies. Hide or delete them under Comments, and close new ones in Settings.

Members-only, rentals and purchases

In a video's Who can watch, choose Everyone, Members — your site's paying members, and anyone who rents or buys it — or Rent or buy only. Under Rent or buy, add shop products and how many days each opens the video for, or for good. A viewer without access sees the offers instead of the video, and no ads play on a paid video.

Your own ads

Under Ads, press New ad and use a video from your library or an image with a link. Choose where it plays — before the video or as a mid-roll — when it can be skipped, and its Weight: an ad with twice the weight plays twice as often. Then turn on Show ads in Settings, where you also set the mid-roll minute and No ads for members and buyers. Every ad shows how often it was shown and clicked.

Going live

1. 1Under Live, press New live event and give it a title and a start time.
2. 2Copy the Server (RTMPS) and Stream key from the Encoder card into OBS or another encoder, and start streaming. The event's page goes live.
3. 3Press End live when you're done. The recording appears under Recordings, and Make it a video turns it into a draft video.

With Live chat on, signed-in viewers can chat during the event, and you can hide messages from the event's page. Live needs video uploads on your plan, and live minutes watched go on your bill like any others.