inserting mobile device video

[BostoniaT]

Happy New Year!

I have an Android video that I saved on my Mac desktop. The video does not have a URL. I inserted the video into a ConstantContact newsletter email using the video block and it played perfectly, but there were no options to save it.

All instructions I've read indicate I need a URL in a link for a video --but nothing popped up for a link anyway when the video played....

Does everyone who has a video on their phone literally have to open a YouTube or Vimeo account or link it to a website to play it in a CC email??

Also, the video is in a Facebook pst, but doesn't look like I can use that link in CC? It appears that I can link the CC email info FB, but not the reverse? I don't want the entire FB page, but just the link for the video....

Thanks for any help with this.

[William_A]

Hello @BostoniaT ,

I'm not sure how you'd have gotten a video from your phone or mac to be inserted into an email, unless it was just the thumbnail of the video or it is actually being hosted somewhere such as your iCloud or Google Drive or something else that'd generate a share link.

Due to the size of video files, and how harshly email algorithms tend to treat them, videos cannot be embedded into emails sent through us - only their share links while they're hosted on other sites. The video block for emails is explicitly an integration-based block, similar to the ecommerce blocks. It's built to be able to pull thumbnail info from Vimeo or YouTube automatically to generate it in your email, when you plug a link in. However it'd still end up redirecting anyone that clicks on it to the actual video's page on the respective site. If you have your video elsewhere, such as in a cloud, dropbox, social media page, or other system that allows videos to be hosted and link shared, then you can add those share links to your email as a text, image, or button link.

Depending on where you're hosting the video, your contacts may or may not need to have an active account with the hosting site to view it. I'd recommend checking out the rules on link sharing for your video's host site before adding it to your emails. At the very least, you can open the link in an Incognito while previewing, to see if the video will still display and play without making a full account in the host site.

See also:

Text links

Image links

Button links