Here’s how to upload a video to SmartVideo using our WordPress plugin and the standard WordPress editor

If you have the SmartVideo plugin for WordPress installed and want to learn how to upload a new video to SmartVideo and add it to a page on your site, then you’re in the right place.

If you have installed SmartVideo using another method and want to learn how to add a video to a page, take a look at our How to add a video to your non-WordPress site article.

How to upload your video

While editing a page in WordPress, add a SmartVideo block by clicking the SmartVideo logo or searching for SmartVideo in the block inserter.

With the block selected, open the Video panel in the block settings sidebar and click Choose from Media Library.

Click Upload Files, then drag and drop your video file from your computer.

Once your video finishes uploading to WordPress, click Select.

The video will now be processed and encoded by Swarmify. This usually takes about as long as the video runs, so a 10-minute video takes about 10 minutes.

While SmartVideo is processing and encoding, the video will be delivered by your site host as a raw, uncompressed video file. Confirm conversion with the devtools check in How do I know SmartVideo is working?.

Here are some things you might want to do after your video is uploaded:

Change the accent color of the player 🎨

Set a custom poster image 🖼

Change the width and height of the player 📏

Turn on autoplay ▶

Mute the video by default 🔇

Make the video loop 🔁

Turn off player controls 🎮

Make the video play in-line on mobile devices 📱

Force the video to maintain fixed dimensions 🔒

How to add a video from a third-party source

While editing a page in WordPress, add a SmartVideo block by clicking the SmartVideo logo or searching for SmartVideo in the block inserter.

With the block selected, paste your video’s URL into Video URL in the block settings sidebar’s Video panel. Use a YouTube URL, a Vimeo URL, or any publicly accessible video file URL.

YouTube conversion is best-effort — YouTube’s download restrictions mean the fetch can fail, so some videos convert and some don’t. For playback you can rely on, download the file and upload it to your SmartVideo library.

SmartVideo imports Vimeo videos whose Who can watch setting is Anyone. To keep those videos private to your own site while SmartVideo serves them, set Where can this be embedded to Specific domains and list your website’s domain. Password-protected and Only me videos stay on Vimeo; change the setting to convert them.

If you’re using Beaver Builder, Elementor, or Divi on WordPress, the process will be very similar.

Embed a video you already uploaded to your SmartVideo Library

Already uploaded your video to your SmartVideo Library and just want to drop it onto a WordPress page? This is different from uploading a brand-new file — your video already lives in Swarmify, so you don’t need to upload it again. You just need to point the SmartVideo block at it.

Step 1 — Grab your video’s source URL from the Library

Open your Swarmify Dashboard and click Video Library.
Click the thumbnail of the video you want to embed to open its Media Details page.
Copy the source URL. (This is the Swarmify-specific URL the plugin reads — it’s not a downloadable file link.)

Step 2 — Add it with the SmartVideo block

Edit the WordPress page or post where you want the video.
Add a SmartVideo block by clicking the SmartVideo logo or searching for SmartVideo in the block inserter.
With the block selected, paste the source URL you copied from the Library into Video URL in the block settings sidebar’s Video panel.
Set the size if you’d like, then publish or update the page.

That’s it — no re-uploading. The same video already in your Library now plays through the SmartVideo player on your site.

Prefer to paste a tag instead?

On the Media Details page you can also copy a ready-to-use SmartVideo tag and drop it into a Custom HTML block:

<smartvideo src="https://your-video.example.com/file.mp4"
            width="1280" height="720"
            class="swarm-fluid" controls>
</smartvideo>

Avoid duplicates: if you’re using the plugin, don’t also paste the global SmartVideo snippet manually on the same page — the plugin already loads it.

In the SmartVideo Library, a finished video shows its poster image; a video that is still processing shows a plain preview of your original file. To confirm it’s working, see How do I know SmartVideo is working?.

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How to upload a video with our WordPress plugin