Jetpack VideoPress: Customizing your videos

Here are some tips and tricks for customizing your Jetpack VideoPress videos.

Modify a Video’s Settings

You can modify a video’s thumbnail, title, caption, description, sharing settings and rating after the video upload and conversion completes. To modify these settings:

1. Go to WordPress.com.
2. In the top left corner, click Switch Site and select the Jetpack-connected site you want to upload videos to.
3. Go to Media.
4. Click on the video(s) that you want to modify. A pink box will appear around the video thumbnail and it will have a number on the thumbnail. If you want to modify multiple videos, each one will be assigned a number.
5. Click “Edit”.

Video Settings

Title, Caption, and Description

You have the option to add a video title, caption, and description, which is helpful for SEO and accessibility.

Share

This setting allows you to enable and disable the sharing menu on the VideoPress player for your videos. If you turn off sharing for your video, you will need to use the shortcode block to add the video to your site.

Please Note: Turning off sharing settings does not mean that site users cannot download your videos completely. It just turns off the sharing menu on Jetpack VideoPress’ native video player.

Download

This setting allows you to display a download option to site users, which will allow the users to download your video.

In the above image, there are three videos on one page with separate settings. The first video has the Share and Download settings enabled. You’ll be able to see shareable links and embed information. The second video has the Share settings enabled, but the Download setting is disabled. The third video has both Share and Download settings disabled – there are no options to access the share display to share or download.

Even if you have disabled sharing on your video, you can still use the VideoPress block or the shortcode block to insert your video.

Privacy

This setting allows you to change whether or not the video is considered Private, for site members only, or Public, for all visitors to your site. For more information, check out our VideoPress: Privacy article.

Rating

This setting allows you to change the content rating of your video.

Please Note: Video content uploaded to Jetpack VideoPress must comply with WordPress.com’s User Guidelines.

Thumbnail

You also have the option to change the thumbnail of your video. You can do this by clicking the Edit Thumbnail button. You will be then be able to scrub through the video and find an image you’d like to be displayed, or upload an image of your own.

Resizing a Video

VideoPress automatically chooses the best player size for your site’s content column. If your default content width is 840 pixels, for example, the video will be displayed to fit that width like so:

For greater control over the width of the video player, you can use a shortcode block and take the following steps:

1. Go to WordPress.com.
2. In the top left corner, click Switch Site and select the Jetpack-connected site you want to upload videos to.
3. Go to Media and click on the video you want, then click Edit.
4. Copy the shortcode by clicking Copy, as shown in the image below. It will start with the [ symbol, followed by wpvideo or videopress, a string of characters and a closing ] symbol.
5. In the post or page that you want to show this video on, add a shortcode block.
6. Paste the shortcode from step 2, then use w=XXX before the end bracket to specify the width in pixels, like this: [wpvideo CqsbPwit w=400].

You may set the video width to a larger or smaller size as long as it fits the width of your theme’s post or page content element.

The shortcode can accept a number of attributes to modify the default behavior. You can use the ones you’d like in this format [wpvideo CqsbPwit attribute=value], so for example [wpvideo CqsbPwit w=640 h=400 autoplay=true html5only=true]. Here is a list of the supported attributes:

• w=X for width in pixels, do not include units
• h=Y for height in pixels, do not include units
• hd=true/false to force HD playback
• freedom=true/false to force only use open source video formats
• autoplay=true/false to automatically play the video when it loads
• loop=true/false to automatically play the video over and over

Adding Subtitles or Captions within a Video

You can add subtitles or captions that will play along with your video by using a .vtt file. You can first start by adding the video to a post or page using the VideoPress Block, and then click on the Text Tracks icon, as shown in the screenshot below:

You can then press Upload Track to upload your .vtt file (read more about .vtt file format here). The Label and Source Language fields will automatically be populated if nothing is inserted.

Please note that when playing your video, captions will be off by default. You can turn them on by clicking the Settings menu in the VideoPress player, then selecting the desired captions.

VideoPress Progress Bar Colors

You will find the Progress Bar Color settings within the block settings when adding your video to a page or post.

VideoPress will automatically default to Match Video which will allow the progress bar to adapt to the video as it plays. If you toggle off Match Video, you’ll be presented with three color sections to change: Main, Loaded, and Progress.

After you select your desired Progress Bar colors be sure to click Save Colors. Now, you’ll be able to see and customize your selected colors as you feel on the same page or post. When you update your page or post these color changes will be live on your selected video.

Example of Match Video Colors

Example of Custom Progress Bar Colors

The color adapt is activated and deactivated by setting the useAverageColor to true or false.