Videos, Sources & Storage

Can I use YouTube videos?

Updated October 5, 2026

Short answer: Yes, two ways — YouTube as the source, which is best-effort, or an upload to your SmartVideo library, which is reliable.

Use YouTube as the source (best-effort)

YouTube’s download restrictions mean the fetch can fail, so some videos convert and some don’t.

Point a SmartVideo tag at the video’s embed URL:

<smartvideo src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID" controls></smartvideo>

A watch?v= link points at the page, not the video, and won’t work. A private video must be set to unlisted — see adding a video to a non-WordPress site.

Or have SmartVideo take over the YouTube embeds already on your pages: turn on Replace YouTube & Vimeo embeds in our WordPress plugin, or set autoreplace: { youtube: true } in your snippet.

When the fetch succeeds, the video plays through the SmartVideo player. An embed SmartVideo takes over is wrapped right away and plays from YouTube inside the SmartVideo player until our copy is ready. Conversion is best-effort; for playback you can rely on, upload to your SmartVideo library.

Bring the video into your SmartVideo library (reliable)

Download and re-upload. Save the YouTube video to your computer, then upload it to SmartVideo storage through your SmartVideo library or our WordPress plugin. The video then plays through the SmartVideo player with all the speed and branding benefits — no dependency on YouTube as a source.

For other supported sources, see our supported file sources.

Stuck on an import?

Send us the source and format details and we’ll help you get the video in.