How SmartVideo works
The short version? It’s pretty magical ✨
How SmartVideo Works
The short version? It’s pretty magical ✨
You have a choice to make
When choosing a video provider for your website, you have a choice to make. Do I go with a “free” service like YouTube and deal with the brand dilution and lead siphoning? Or do I pay up and piece together multiple services to handle encoding, storage, delivery, and player?
The first option might seem like a good one until you take a hard look at what it costs you to lose a sale or sign up to an errant click on one of YouTube’s many links in their player. The second option might appeal to the most tech savvy among us, but the costs add up and the friction of managing multiple services often far outweighs the benefits.
We don’t think those should be your only options. That’s why we built SmartVideo.
Why SmartVideo?
SmartVideo was built for site owners who need to grow beyond YouTube’s “free” offering but aren’t willing to spend thousands of dollars and dozens of hours every month managing each piece of their site’s video experience. We bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table thanks to what we learned building enterprise-level video delivery solutions for massive media corporations.
With SmartVideo, you get unlimited storage, premium encoding, lightning-fast delivery, and a clean player, all for one price.
How’s SmartVideo different?
We’re quite a bit different from the average video host. With us, your videos start about 12x faster, buffer 8x less, and are served by our global delivery network with device-specific encodes. In short – we know how to deliver your videos to your audience quickly, in high quality, and with no hiccups.
Another way we differ from most video hosts is that we believe you should always be in possession of your original source files. That’s why we grab a copy of your video from wherever you store the original before making 5-10 encodings of it, so it plays back perfectly on all devices.
Here’s how it works…
1. Sign up for a SmartVideo account
Signing up is easy. We just need some basic info and a card on file for you.
2. Install SmartVideo on your site
After creating your account, you’ll land in your Swarmify Dashboard and be presented with an interactive tutorial that will guide you through the installation process. For thoroughness’ sake, here’s a summary of how you’ll install SmartVideo:
• If your site is built on WordPress, you’ll more than likely want to take advantage of our SmartVideo plugin for the platform
• If you use a different CMS to manage your website, you’ll simply copy and paste our snippet of JavaScript into the <head> tag of your site (if that sounds scary, don’t worry… we’re always here to assist 😊)
3. Configure your settings
If you installed the SmartVideo plugin for WordPress, you’ll find your settings in the plugin’s “Settings” menu. You can choose to toggle on or off auto-conversions, background video optimization and closed captions, change the color and shape of the play button, and much more.
If you pasted the script into your site’s <head> tag, you will have already configured your settings while generating your SmartVideo script. You can change your settings at any time by returning to the “Configuration” tab in your Swarmify dashboard.
4. Add videos to your site
If you have YouTube or Vimeo embeds on your site and you’ve turned on the auto-conversion setting, your embeds will start converting to SmartVideos automagically ✨
If you have our WordPress plugin installed and need to add a new video to your site, simply copy your video’s source URL and paste it into the source field of a SmartVideo block.
If you do not have our WordPress plugin installed, just paste your video’s source URL into a SmartVideo tag.
Quick note: unlike images, video processing is not instantaneous. While we’re processing your video (a five-minute video will usually take less than 10 minutes), SmartVideo will use the original source to play the video. After the processing is complete, you’ll see a “Video Acceleration: ON” indicator in the player, which means that SmartVideo is delivering the file.
5. View your stats in the dashboard
Now that SmartVideos are being watched on your site, you can head back to the Swarmify Dashboard and take a look at your stats. You’ll see video views, customer saves, quality improvement, a SmartVideo score, and some basic demographics. We’re working on adding even more helpful data to the dashboard, so stay tuned!
There’s a good chance your website visitors are seeing this on your videos…
FAQ
(we get these a lot)
Who is Swarmify? 🐝
Swarmify is a video acceleration company focused on bringing the streaming technologies used by the biggest names in the streaming video industry (Netflix, Hulu) to everyone in a simple package. We offer the world's fastest video at an affordable price to all.
What is SmartVideo? ▶️
SmartVideo is Swarmify's mission realized: the power of Netflix-quality streaming made simple for everyone. The SmartVideo platform includes a professional, modern player making use of our patented network technology providing stall-out free playback at maximum bitrates.
Who is SmartVideo for? 👩
We built SmartVideo with two groups of people in mind: developers looking to build a professional but simple video experience for themselves or their clients and sales-focused small to medium-sized business owners tired of YouTube's branding and recommended videos cluttering their site's video experience and impacting their sales. You can find video hosting case studies on a few of our customers on our blog.
Who is SmartVideo not for? ⛔
SmartVideo is not for you if "free" is your only option. In that case, YouTube is probably still your best bet despite their branding, recommended videos, and purposeful intent of directing your visitors away from your site and onto YouTube.
Why should I choose SmartVideo over YouTube? 🤔
As we said before, YouTube is your best option if you are unable to pay anything for video delivery and don't necessarily need your site to appear professional. However, YouTube is not providing playback on your site free of charge. They are funneling users from your site with recommended videos and capturing your visitor's attention with their logo. If you don't mind losing a steady percentage of visitors and having YouTube's branding on your site, YouTube is a good option.
Can I use this for live video? 📽️
We don't currently support live video with our SmartVideo product. If you would like to be notified when we do add support for it, please email our Support Team and they will put you on the notification list.
I use Vimeo on my site. How do I transition to SmartVideo? 🎓
If you use Vimeo on your site, your workflow is probably something like this:
- Upload to Vimeo
- Grab your embed code from Vimeo
- Place the embed code where you want the video on your site.
Once SmartVideo is installed, you won't need to change your current workflow at all to get a professional video experience on your site. SmartVideo places all your Vimeo embeds into our clutter-free player without any extra work on your part.
How do the auto Vimeo conversions work? ♻️
When you embed a Vimeo video on your site, SmartVideo sees the embed, downloads the file, and re-encodes it. From then on, the video is delivered over our intelligent network, through our player.
What kind of websites can I use SmartVideo on? 💻
SmartVideo works on any site you can add script to the header on. That includes any site you create with WordPress, Squarespace, or Adobe Muse. For WordPress users, we have a WordPress plugin that allows for even easier deployment. If you have any questions regarding the kind of sites we work on, just chat us up!
Do you have any restrictions on content types? 🚫
Swarmify does not have any specific restrictions on acceptable content types. You may use our video delivery for any content that is legally permissible subject to United States law; and for which you have the appropriate rights to use and transmit to your customers.
We are responsive to the DMCA process. Any communication in this regard may be sent to legal@swarmify.com. See our terms and conditions for additional details.
SmartVideo was made for site owners like you.
Get Netflix-like quality for your site today. Affordable. Professional. Effortless.