Photographs and footage, together
An event photo gallery with videos in the same pile as the photographs
An event photo gallery with videos means clips arriving through the same link as the stills, sitting in the same gallery, playing on the same screen and coming down in the same download: what that takes, and where it stops.
A room full of phones stopped taking photographs of the interesting part and started filming it, which is why the useful question is no longer whether to collect videos but where they should go. They go badly in a chat, where a forty-second clip of the first dance arrives as a file nobody can find in the scroll and half the group cannot open. They go badly in somebody's cloud album, where they fill a free allowance in an afternoon and then stop. They go well in the same place as the stills, because the pile is one event: the photograph of the toast and the eleven seconds of noise that went with it are the same memory, and the person who wants to relive the day should not have to visit two applications to find both halves of it.
What a clip has to be before it will get in
- The formats it accepts
- MP4, MOV, M4V and WebM, which is the whole of what a camera phone produces on iPhone and Android without anybody converting anything first. Nothing asks a guest to re-encode a file before sending it, because that request never survives contact with a real event.
- The size of one clip
- Up to 100 megabytes per file. That is a short piece of footage, a dance, a speech, a goal, and it is deliberately not enough for a whole match or a two-hour service, which belong on a drive rather than in a collection of a day.
- How many clips the event holds
- Thirty at the entry level, a hundred above that, three hundred at the top, and none on a free collection, which is photographs only. Extra footage is bought as a one-off rather than as a bigger subscription: fifty clips for nine dollars, a hundred for fifteen.
- Whether clips are wanted at all
- There is a switch that turns video off for the collection, and when it is off the upload page refuses clips politely rather than accepting them into a pile nobody asked for. Footage can also be kept out of the room display while staying in the gallery, which is a separate decision and usually the right one for a room that is talking.
Where the footage sits once it has arrived
In the same gallery, in the same arrival order, with a small marker and the length written across the corner of the tile so a scroll is not a guessing game. Where the browser managed to make a still from the file, that still is the tile; where it did not, the tile is dark with a play mark on it, which is honest rather than broken-looking. Filters along the top of the page separate stills from footage, and the person who sent something has a view of their own contributions, so a parent who filmed three things and photographed twenty can find what they sent without hunting. Opening a clip plays it in the viewer with the ordinary controls, and the download treats it like any other file, which is the difference between a gallery that hosts video and a gallery that keeps it.
The room screen, where a clip is a decision rather than a treat
A slideshow that plays footage is a different instrument from one that plays stills, because the room stops for a clip and does not stop for a photograph. The display therefore treats video as its own setting: clips can be included or left out, how long one is held before the wall moves on is chosen in seconds, with a default of forty-five and an adjustable ceiling of ten minutes, and setting the hold to none lets a clip run to its own length. The arrangement matters just as much. A layout built from many small frames has no way to show a moving picture and simply treats it as another tile, while a single-subject layout gives the clip the whole screen, which is what the person who filmed it expects and what a room of people eating dinner does not.
Sound, and the room that is already noisy
Clips arrive silent on a screen by default, and there is a switch that lets them play with their own audio. That default exists because the practical failure mode of a room display is not a bad photograph, it is a video speaking over a conversation, or over the speech somebody is actually giving, at a table nobody can reach to turn down. Where footage with sound is the point, a wedding being the obvious one, the answer is a person at the machine rather than a setting: the display can be driven from a keyboard, with the keys for full screen, stepping, holding a frame and muting written into it, and a clip that needs hearing can be stopped on purpose and played with the room quiet. For a wall running unattended in a bar, silent is nearly always the better arrangement, and it is the one it starts in.
Filmed messages are a separate surface
A clip someone sends from their camera roll and a message someone records on the spot are two different things in the product. The recorder is called the video guestbook, it belongs to the collection rather than the gallery, and it has its own guide rather than being described here.
What the video guestbook doesWhat the download hands back
The archive is not a playlist. Clips come down as the files they were, same bytes, same length, same camera's own name with a number in front of it, sitting in the arrival sequence between the photographs that were sent around the same time. That is the property that matters for anybody who intends to do something with the footage: an editor, a relative with a laptop, or the person who ends up cutting the anniversary film can open these files in ordinary software, and nothing has been re-compressed on the way through. There is no stitching, no automatic montage, no title sequence and no export of a single video, and there is no way to play a clip to somebody who has not been given the collection at all, since a hosted period ends for the footage exactly when it ends for the photographs.
What this is not, stated before somebody assumes it
- No live streaming. A screen shows the collection in a browser on a machine; there is no feed to send to a room, a relative's tablet or a website.
- No player from another service. A clip hosted somewhere else cannot be embedded, and links out of the gallery are not what this holds.
- No editing of any kind: no trimming, no cutting, no re-encoding, no captions burned onto a picture, no cover chosen for a clip.
- No automatic highlights, no sorting by what is in the frame, and no assistant that watches the footage and finds the good part.
- No separate video albums or channels. One event is one collection, and a season of fixtures needs one collection per occasion rather than a library.
- No unlimited anything. The clip count belongs to the level paid for at the start and can be raised by a one-off purchase, and both the stills and the footage stop when the hosted period ends.
What to ask a room for, if you want usable footage
A general request produces a general pile. Say the photograph and everybody photographs; name the moment and several people will film exactly it, which is either a disaster or the best coverage you have ever had depending on what the moment is. The wording that brings clips rather than stills is specific and short: the speech, the first dance, the walk down the aisle, the last waltz, the team arriving back, the grandparent who wants to say something to camera. Ask twice rather than once, once before the moment and once after, because a room that has been told about a specific thing tends to have already started filming it badly and would like another attempt. Expect the duplicates and treat them as insurance: three angles of the same dance is what a person cutting it later has to work with, and choosing between them is twenty minutes rather than an argument with a chat history. The one ask that reliably fails is the long one; nobody wants to be the person who filmed a nine-minute speech and then had to upload it on a bad signal in a car park, so keep the request to the parts that matter and let the recording that somebody made for themselves stay on their own phone.
How much footage a room actually sends
The shape of a video pile is predictable and worth planning for. A hundred guests at a wedding produce a couple of thousand photographs and somewhere in the dozens of clips, because filming takes an intention that snapping does not, and most of the dozens are the same thirty seconds from three angles. The consequence at the entry level is real rather than theoretical: thirty clips is a genuine allowance for a mid-sized event and a tight one for a hundred guests who all decided to film the first dance, which is why extra footage is priced as a one-off rather than as an argument. The other planning point is bandwidth on the day. A clip at the top of the allowance, a hundred megabytes, is a slow upload on a crowded mobile signal, and the reservation that hands a guest a place to write the file to is good for a quarter of an hour, so a big film sent from a field with one bar may need retrying from a stronger connection rather than from a different application.
The questions a room asks about the footage
Does the gallery compress my video?
No. The file is stored as sent and downloaded as stored. A short preview still may be made by the browser for the tile, and that is beside the file rather than instead of it, so the copy that comes back out of the archive is the one that went in.
Can my guest send a clip straight from their camera, or does it have to be saved first?
They choose files on the upload page the same way they choose a photograph, and a clip picked from the camera roll goes as it is. Nobody installs anything, and nobody is asked to convert, trim or share through another application first.
Why can my aunt not play the file she downloaded?
Usually because it is a MOV or an HEVC-encoded MP4 from a recent phone and the machine in front of her is older. The fix is a modern player rather than a converter, and the fallback is to open the gallery on that machine, where the browser plays it, or to send the clip to somebody who can re-save it as a plain MP4.
How long can a clip be?
There is no length limit and there is a size one: 100 megabytes per file, the same for every package. On a phone that is a minute or two at ordinary settings and a much shorter time at the highest resolution, so a speech or a dance fits and a whole service does not.
Can the screen play the clips without the sound embarrassing anybody?
Yes, and that is the default. Footage plays silent unless audio is switched on for the display, individual clips can be held or stepped past from the keyboard, and video can be left out of the wall entirely while staying in the gallery.
Do the videos cost extra?
They are part of the one payment for the event, with a clip allowance that comes with the level you chose: thirty, a hundred, or three hundred. Going over it is a one-off purchase of fifty or a hundred more rather than a bigger plan, and a free collection takes photographs only.
What happens to the footage when the collection closes?
Exactly what happens to the photographs, which is the reason the download is the most important minute of the whole arrangement. Clips come down as files, go onto your own storage, and stop depending on anybody's hosting window.
Collect the sound as well as the picture
One link, one page, both kinds of file. Ask the room for the clip of the toast, the goal and the speech while the memory is warm, and take the archive down before the hosted period ends so the footage survives the year.
How it works
Put one link on the tables and let everyone contribute.
Create a collection, print the table stands, and the photographs your guests took are waiting for you the morning after. Guests never install anything and never make an account.