Chapter 4
IN THIS CHAPTER
Recording video on your smartphone or tablet
Getting your videos ready to post
Posting your video
Posting multiple videos from an iPhone or iPad
Uploading longer videos from your computer desktop
Your iPhone, iPad, and Android devices all have video cameras, and Instagram puts them to great use. In this chapter, we explain how to record, edit, and share video in the Instagram app by using a smartphone or a tablet. Sorry, Windows users: Instagram doesn’t support using your webcam to take video.
Instagram gives you the flexibility to record or upload videos in posts on mobile devices that are as short as 1 second or as long as 60 seconds. If you find that 60 seconds is too limiting, use the video as a teaser (think of it as your own movie preview) to get people to click through to your website or to another video website such as YouTube.
When you’re ready to start recording a video on your iPhone, iPad, Android smartphone, or Android tablet, open the Instagram app (if it’s not open already) and then tap the plus (+) icon at the top of the home screen. Then tap Post in the drop-down menu.
The first time you open the Camera screen, a pop-up window appears, as shown in Figure 4-1. Instagram wants to access the microphone on your smartphone so it can record videos with sound. Access the microphone by tapping OK.
The camera screen has the following elements, all labeled in Figure 4-2:
When you’re ready to take a video, tap and hold the shutter button. The orange-red recording bar appears as a circle around the shutter button as you record your video (see Figure 4-3).
Once you release your finger or after you’ve recorded 60 seconds of video, the video plays continuously in the viewer within the Filter screen. You can pause playback by tapping anywhere in the viewer. When you want to play it again, tap the Play button, in the middle of the viewer, as shown in Figure 4-4.
You can improve your video in several ways: by adding a filter, changing the cover frame, and trimming the video. In this section, you start by applying a filter to your video in the Filter screen.
Below the viewer is a row of filters. (The Normal, Clarendon, and Gingham filters are shown in Figure 4-4.) The thumbnail image below each filter shows you the filter’s effect on your video.
Swipe in the row of thumbnails to view all 23 filters. (Normal is the default, so it isn’t considered a filter.) Tap a filter’s thumbnail, and the video with the applied filter plays in the viewer.
You can change the intensity of any filter by tapping the filter’s thumbnail and then moving the slider to the left or right. (The default intensity is 100.) As you move the slider, the video reflects the change. When you’ve finished selecting an intensity, tap Done.
If you find your video is too long, tap Trim at the lower-right corner of the Filter screen shown in Figure 4-4. The Trim screen shown in Figure 4-5 plays the video in the viewer at the top of the screen and has the timeline with all the frames in the video underneath the viewer.
As the video plays, the white bar in the timeline moves from left to right to denote the video frame that’s playing. You can remove frames in the video by tapping and holding the white resizing bars on each end of the timeline and then dragging the bar to the left and right.
Frames that aren’t playing appear dimmed, but you can view them again by dragging the resizing bars to the left or right. As you move the resizing bars, the video plays so you can see how the video looks without the frames you hid.
When you’re happy with your trim and filter, tap Next in the upper-right corner of the screen.
Instagram uses the first frame from your video to produce a cover frame, which is the frame that appears at the start of your video and in your Instagram feed. You can change the cover frame as follows:
On the New Post screen, tap Cover in the upper-left corner of the screen.
The default cover frame appears in the viewer and also below the viewer in a white focus box. The other frames appear next to the focus box and are dimmed, as shown in Figure 4-6.
Tap and hold down on the frame in the focus box, and then drag the frame within the row.
As you drag, the focus box moves to another frame in your video, and you see this new cover frame in the viewer.
In the screen that displays your video (refer to Figure 4-4), tap Next. The New Post screen appears, as shown in Figure 4-7.
On this screen, you can add a caption, include a location where the video was recorded, add a fundraiser for a cause you support, share the video on other social media networks, and turn commenting on and off. The process for adding all this good stuff is described in Chapter 3.
When you’re ready to post your video, tap Share at the bottom of the New Post screen on iOS devices, or the check mark in the upper-right corner on Android devices (refer to Figure 4-7). After a few seconds, your video appears on the Instagram home screen, as shown in Figure 4-8.
The video starts playing as soon as you view it and will play continuously every time you view the post. The video plays without sound, but you can turn on the sound by tapping the speaker icon in the lower-right corner of the video.
It’s easy to upload a video that you’ve already recorded and stored on your iPhone, iPad, or Android smartphone or tablet. Simply follow these steps:
Select the video you want to upload by tapping its thumbnail image in the Recents section, as shown in Figure 4-9.
The video plays continuously in the viewer. Stop playback by tapping anywhere in the viewer.
Instagram automatically crops your video to the size of the viewer, but you can resize the video to its original size by tapping the resize icon (labeled in Figure 4-9).
(Optional) Apply a filter, change the cover frame, and trim your video.
These tasks are described in the “Improving Your Video” section, earlier in this chapter.
(Optional) Add a caption and a location, specify other social networks where you want to share your video, and turn commenting on or off.
These tasks are the same for photos and videos. For details, see the section on enriching photos in Chapter 3.
If you’ve already taken videos with your iPhone or iPad and saved them to your Camera Roll, you can upload them to a single Instagram video and share it with your followers. Sorry, Android users; this feature isn’t available on Android smartphones yet.
Follow these steps to upload multiple clips into one Instagram video:
Tap Next.
The Filter screen appears, and the viewer plays the first video. The second video appears to the right of the first video (see Figure 4-10). The video that’s playing plays first in the video followed by the second video.
Tap Trim, at the bottom of the screen.
The Trim screen appears, and your selected video plays in the viewer.
Trim the first video.
These tasks are described in the “Improving Your Video” section earlier in the chapter, with the exception that the resize bars in the timeline are black instead of white.
Tap Done.
The Filter screen appears.
Repeat Steps 5 through 9 for the second video.
As you add each clip, Instagram assigns it a number indicating its order in the video.
If you add a clip that puts your video over the 60-second limit, Instagram automatically trims the last clip so that your entire video lasts for exactly 60 seconds.
Tap Next.
The New Post screen appears.
(Optional) Type a caption, add a location, share your video on other social networks, and turn commenting on or off.
For more information, read the section on enriching photos in Chapter 3. All the information there applies not only to photos but also to videos.
Instagram allows you to upload videos of up to ten minutes in length via the Instagram website on a desktop web browser.
Follow these steps to upload videos on the Instagram website: