How guests upload videos

The length comes from the plan

Each plan allows a recording length. A free event takes 30 seconds; the paid tiers take 5, 10 and 15 minutes. The limit bites on the guest page itself — pick a longer clip and it says the clip is longer than this event allows, and asks for a shorter one.

You can also set a shorter length for your own event, whatever the plan allows. That suits a party where you want many short greetings rather than a few long speeches.

1. Open the guest page. Scan the code or tap the shared link. Video has its own area on the page.
2. Pick a clip. The camera roll opens. Short clips have the advantage: they arrive faster and get watched more.
3. Wait for it to finish. The page shows progress. Closing it cancels the upload in flight; anything already sent stays.

The size ceiling is derived from the length rather than maintained separately, so it always fits what a phone records in that time.

Why a video takes longer

A video is many times larger than a photo, and the time to finish depends on the connection rather than on our side. Measured across 138 production videos the median data rate is 1.84 MB per second of footage, and an iPhone shooting 4K writes around 6.7 MB per second. A minute of recording becomes several hundred megabytes.

In practice: 3 short clips arrive more reliably than 1 of 10 minutes, and each of them is already in the album while the long one is still sending.

Which video formats go through

MP4, MOV and WebM — which is what phones record without anyone changing a setting. MOV is the iPhone default and needs no conversion. Files are checked by their contents rather than their extension, so renaming one achieves nothing.

Anything else is refused at the door. If you are uploading a clip out of an editing app, export it as MP4.

After the upload comes the work

A video that has arrived is not yet in the album. It is prepared first so it starts smoothly on a phone network later, and only then reaches the state the album displays. For long clips that takes minutes rather than seconds.

While that runs, the guest sees nothing of their video in the album. Worth saying out loud, or they send the same file a second time.

Turning video off entirely

Video is on by default and can be switched off per event. The guest page then shows photos and, if enabled, voice notes. That is the quickest lever when storage is tight or the venue network cannot carry anything large.

Photos cannot be switched off. They are the point of an album and are always available.

What to tell your guests

3 sentences save you half the evening s questions. Keep clips short, leave the page open until it says it is done, and switch to mobile data if the Wi-Fi stalls. Put that on the table card and you will not repeat it 20 times.

For speeches a voice note is the better shape anyway: smaller, faster to arrive and easier to listen to afterwards.