Video sharing
Event video sharing for the clips everybody took
Guests filmed the toast, the first dance and the cake. Getting those clips into one collection at full size, without a group chat turning them into confetti, is the whole job — and it is a different job from the one most people mean when they say video guestbook.
Somebody in every room films the thing nobody else sees: the best man's speech from three rows back, your grandmother's face during the last song, a burst of sparklers in the parking lot at eleven o'clock. At the moment it happens, the person holding the phone assumes the clip will find its way to whoever wants it, and it does not, unless the path from their camera roll to your hands is shorter than the path to a group chat they are already tired of scrolling. Event video sharing is the work of making that path short, and it covers two kinds of footage. One is a clip that already exists on somebody's phone and needs somewhere to go; that arrives through the guest upload page, in the same submission as their photographs. The other is a message a guest records for you on the spot, which is the video guestbook, included on Celebrate and Keepsake and a nine dollar add-on to Gather. Both land in one collection, with a name attached to every entry and a date when the whole thing comes down.
Where guest clips actually go missing
The messaging app
Video is the first casualty of a chat. A clip that leaves a phone at its real size arrives squeezed twice to save bandwidth, so the toast that made the room laugh lands as a soft rectangle with audio nobody can listen to. Four people send the same moment, eight send nothing at all, and by the weekend the thread has scrolled past every one of them.
Their own camera roll
Nobody can find a clip they filmed six days earlier. Still images at least sit in a recents album where the eye can find them; video hides underneath screenshots, school work and forty seconds of somebody else's kitchen. Asking a guest for the file is really asking them to dig, and digging is the one task that gets postponed indefinitely.
A shared cloud folder
This works well for the four people already inside the same ecosystem as you, password ready, app already installed. For everyone else it is a sign-in, an invitation to accept and a folder they have never opened, which is a great deal to ask of somebody still wearing their coat and holding a drink.
A public post
A tag gathers clips enthusiastically and then puts every one of them in front of strangers, including the one where your uncle says something he will regret by March. It also leans on a platform keeping your event findable long after the week has moved on, which platforms reliably do not do.
A phone handed to you at the door
Somebody will press their device into your palm and say they have three videos you need. Now you own a job: the clips get copied at midnight, badly, on a keyboard, and the two you did not notice stay buried in their gallery forever. A short upload path is cheaper than being helpful in the hallway.
The three people who actually have the footage
The one who films everything
Every room has a person who raises their phone before the speech starts and lowers it after the dancing ends. They are not the difficulty. They will send if the link is in their hand at midnight, when the clips are still open in their camera roll and the moment is still warm. Lose them until the following weekend and their phone has filled with school runs and receipts, and the dig begins again.
The one who filmed exactly one thing
Forty seconds of the first dance from the good angle, or the only clip of your father cutting the cake. This person would never post a video anywhere and does not think of themselves as somebody with footage to contribute, so a general request will not reach them. Naming the moment is what works: ask for the dance and they remember holding the phone up during the dance.
The one who has not looked yet
The guest who filmed generously and then never opened the gallery again. Their clips are perfect and unsorted, sitting behind an album they scroll once a month. A week later, one message that says the collection is still open until a stated date recovers most of them, which is why the closing date is worth writing down rather than leaving vague.
What a collection holds once the clips arrive
- Files as they arrived
- The clip your guest chose is stored exactly as it left their camera, at its real size and with its real audio. Nothing is squeezed on the way in to save somebody else storage, which is the difference between a collection and a chat.
- A preview drawn on their phone
- The small tile the grid needs is produced in the browser on the contributor's own device at the moment they upload. That is why a collection carrying a couple of hundred photographs and a hundred clips can still open quickly on a venue's unreliable wifi.
- Stills beside the footage
- Photographs and clips live in the one gallery rather than in two addresses, so the picture of the toast and the film of it are found together, by the same name, in the same afternoon of looking back.
- Recorded messages
- Camera recording inside the browser, or an uploaded video file, on Celebrate and Keepsake, or as a nine dollar add-on to Gather. Written messages sit on the same page from Gather upward, so the two kinds of wish belong to one occasion.
- A name on every entry
- A contributor gives their name once and is not asked again for twelve hours. Attribution is what turns a pile of footage into a collection you can go back through, and it tells you whose camera still has more where that came from.
- A room address
- A separate, token-gated slideshow address plays the accepted collection on the venue's screen or projector. It is an add-on on Gather and included from Celebrate upward, and it is the reason guests can see their own footage before they leave.
- Nothing you refused
- With approval switched on, a submission waits until the host accepts it, and rejected files are left out of the archive. What you kept is what you download, which is a calmer way to run a room than deleting things after they have already been projected.
- A closing date
- Every plan states how long a collection stays online from its event date, and warning mail arrives before anything is removed. What you download is what survives, which is the only part of this you genuinely control.
Setting the evening up so the clips arrive
Pick a plan with room for video
The free Preview plan takes photographs only: twenty images, ten contributing guests, seven days online, no clips, no guestbook and no downloads. Gather carries 30 clips, Celebrate 100 and Keepsake 300. A room of eighty guests with a speech worth filming will move through thirty clips before dessert, so when the footage is the point, plan for Celebrate or hold some extra-upload allowance in reserve.
Decide which kind of video you are after
Uploaded footage needs nothing beyond the gallery. Recorded messages need the guestbook switched on and a plan that includes them or lets you add them. Set this before the link goes out, because a guest who is invited to record and then meets a wall gets an unpleasant surprise at exactly the wrong moment. The free preview tier offers neither written nor filmed messages, so it cannot test this part of the evening at all.
Print the stands where the phones already are
Four table stands print on one A4 sheet from the dashboard, on an ordinary printer. Put them on the tables first, then the bar and the door on the way out, because most clips are filmed standing up by people who never sat down at any point in the evening.
Write one line about what you want filmed
The welcome text is read by every contributor at the moment of decision, so it is worth a sentence with a reason in it. Naming the speeches, the dance floor and anything the photographer could not see gives a guest something to look for; asking them to upload their photos and videos gives them a chore.
Say it out loud once, and point
Thirty seconds in the welcome, with a gesture at the screen if the slideshow is running. The room needs to know that footage lands somewhere useful rather than in a void, and the fastest proof is a clip somebody sent twenty minutes earlier playing behind the cake table.
Look at the collection twice during the evening
Once before the main course and once before the last dance, on your phone, in about a minute each time. If approval is switched on, a clip that nobody reviewed is a clip the room never saw, and the guests who were waiting to be encouraged are exactly the ones who sent the best footage.
Name the gap the next morning
By then you know what is missing, so one message can ask for exactly that: nobody has sent the first dance, nobody has sent the garden, nobody has sent the send-off. A specific ask retrieves a specific file, and video is the file that most needs asking for by name rather than in general.
What to write where the phone already is
- On the invitation: one line, one address, no explanation of how it works. A guest reads this before they have any reason to care, so it only has to survive being skimmed.
- In the programme: the slideshow address and a note that the wall is fed by what people send. Printed programmes get read at tables for twenty minutes at a time.
- On the table stands: the code, the occasion date and one named request. Nothing else fits and nothing else is read.
- In the welcome speech: the two moments you hope somebody filmed, said out loud, with a gesture at the screen if it is running.
- In the first morning message: what is missing by name, plus the date the collection closes. Vague gratitude retrieves nothing.
- In the last message: one sentence, still open for two more days, no apology for asking twice. The guest who was going to forget appreciates the second nudge more than the first.
Every one of these lines is a request for footage rather than an instruction manual. The page itself explains the taps; your words explain what is worth tapping for.
What each plan takes
- Preview · free
- Twenty photographs, ten contributing guests, seven days online. No video at all and no downloads, so treat it as a rehearsal of the settings, the link and the printed stands rather than of the footage.
- Gather · $19
- 200 photographs and 30 clips, unlimited contributors, a written guestbook, six months online and standard downloads. The live slideshow and the recorded video guestbook are each a nine dollar one-off on this tier.
- Celebrate · $39
- 750 photographs and 100 clips, video guestbook and live slideshow included, original-quality downloads and twelve months online. This is the plan people choose when the footage is the reason they are doing it.
- Keepsake · $69
- 2,000 photographs and 300 clips, two years online, premium gallery themes and two additional people who can help manage the collection. Built for an occasion you intend to hand to your children.
- Room to grow
- Extra uploads can be bought for five to fifteen dollars, and longer retention for nine dollars to add six months or fifteen to add twelve. Prices are US dollars, charged once per event, and no guest ever sees one.
- Words rather than footage
- If you only want what people write, Gather carries a written guestbook with no add-on at all. Recorded video is the extra, and it is worth the extra only when the voices are the point: a grandfather's blessing, a friend reading a toast, a message from somebody who could not travel.
How the clip allowance runs out, and what to do about it
- It empties in one burst, not evenly
- Nothing arrives while people are eating. The thirty clips that matter land in about twenty minutes: one speech, then the first dance, then the sparklers. If your allowance is the smaller one, the room can exhaust it on the speeches and never know, which is why the dashboard is worth a glance before the dancing starts rather than after.
- The first guest to hit the ceiling sees the problem
- Uploads stop being accepted once the allowance is spent, and the person who is turned away is a guest you have already asked. Buy the extra upload allowance early and this never happens in front of somebody who was being helpful.
- You can watch it fill
- The collection shows what has arrived and how much room is left. One minute of looking twice during the evening tells you whether to name a missing moment in the toast or send a message before anybody drives home.
- Longer is not always more
- Retention buys you time to collect late footage, not capacity. If the room sent everything it had by midnight, the six or twelve extra months are for your own camera roll and the two guests who find their clips next month.
The clip you are missing was taken. Somebody simply never had a short enough way to hand it over.
After the download, what you do with a hundred clips
Take the archive once, in full
One file containing every photograph and every clip as it arrived, plus the written and recorded messages with their names. Take it when the last expected pile is in rather than in the final week of the period, so a late contribution is included without a second download.
Sort by the moment rather than the sender
A folder per part of the day beats a folder per guest. The clip of the toast belongs with the other toasts, and the person who filmed it is the name you add once you are looking for the one who sent the bad angle.
Delete the duplicates while they are still fresh
Four people film the first dance and one of them is steady. Choose it now, while you can still remember which clips were shaky, and keep the other three only if the angles differ enough to be worth the storage.
Send the two guests whose clips you kept asking for
The person who filmed from the back and the person who caught the garden both deserve their own copy. It costs a message and it is the one thank-you nobody expects.
Put one copy somewhere that is not a laptop
The archive you downloaded is the only version that outlives the collection. A drive, or a second machine, or a photo subscription — anything other than the folder you happen to open every day.
Things hosts ask before a link goes on a table
Do my guests need an app to send a video?
No. The code or the address opens a browser page on the device already in their hand, and photographs and clips can travel together in one submission. Nothing to install, no account to create, and no price shown to a guest at any tier.
Is a clip sent here better than one sent in a chat?
The file is stored as it arrived, so what you download is what their camera made. Messaging apps compress on the way out and a collection does not, which is the whole difference between a watchable toast and a blurry one you ignore.
How many clips will my room actually send?
It depends far more on the ask than on the crowd, so anybody who promises you a number is guessing. What you control is the allowance on the plan — 30, 100 or 300 clips — and whether you told the room what you were hoping to see.
Can a guest record a message without fighting their camera?
Yes, on the plans carrying the video guestbook: the browser opens the camera and they record straight into the page. Anyone who dislikes that can upload a clip they already took instead, which usually looks better and always sounds better.
Who can see the footage we collect?
Only the people you give the address to. Guest pages are kept out of search indexes and the address is not listed anywhere. Switch the public gallery off and contributors upload into the collection without browsing what other guests sent.
Can the same guest send clips more than once?
Yes, and they are not asked for their name again within twelve hours, so a contribution made at dinner and a second one sent from the hotel room both land in the same collection. Late footage is usually the footage you would have otherwise lost.
Does a room slideshow help me collect video?
It is the strongest encouragement available, because a guest who watches their own clip appear on the wall tells the person sitting next to them. Slideshow access costs nine dollars on Gather and comes included on Celebrate and Keepsake.
Would this work at a conference rather than a party?
Yes. A corporate event and a conference are both occasions you can choose when creating a collection, and the controls are the ones an organisation cares about: approval before anything shows, and a gallery that can be set to upload-only for a room full of people you have never met.
Is a recorded message the same thing as a clip in the gallery?
No, and people mix them up constantly. A clip in the gallery is footage your guest already took and is now sending you. A recorded message is made for you at the page itself, into the browser's camera, and it belongs to the guestbook, which is a separate switch from the gallery.
What happens to the clips when the collection closes?
Warning mail reaches you first. After it comes down, the archive you downloaded is the only copy that exists, so take it in the week after the event rather than in the last days of the period you paid for.
Ask for the clips while the phones are still out
Open a collection, print the stands, and give your guests one short path from their camera roll to you. Setup takes a couple of minutes, and the free plan runs a real event so you can watch how it fills.
Video and guestbook messages
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.