How to Embed Video in Slack
Slack aims to change the way we work, by replacing office software and even the office itself. About 2.3 million people (including us here at Clipchamp) use Slack every day to message, make payments, host code, manage tasks and do a lot more.
The emoji-laced team communications platform allows people to work in virtual teams and makes it fun to do so. If you’d like to include video in your team conversations, here are some simple tips for how to embed videos in Slack!
Helpful tips about adding video to Slack
*The Clipchamp Slack app is discontinued
The easiest way to upload videos to Slack that would usually be too big or in an unrecognized video format is to use our new free Clipchamp Video Messages app for Slack.
It not only lets you upload large video files faster, it also lets your team record webcam videos directly in a Slack channel or direct message – a world first.
Our app also helps to prevent the issues you might be running into when uploading videos directly, please see below for what they are.
Upload a file directly – easy but it’s got 2 downsides
Without any extra extensions or apps such as ours, you can add video to a Slack channel or message by directly uploading a file. There are 3 ways to do this:
drag and drop into the Slack window,
copy and paste into the message box,
or click on the + icon next to the message box to select the location of the file from your computer or Google Drive.
Once you have selected your video file, Slack will prompt you to choose a sharing option, title and comment. To avoid this, hold the Shift key while dropping or pasting the file and it will skip over this option.
Afterwards, simply wait for the video to upload and appear in the Slack channel or message.
There are 2 downsides to this direct uploading
The upload file size limit is currently 1 GB
Only some video formats will actually get recognised as playable videos and thus embedded properly.
If the video is of an unknown format to Slack, your team members will have to download it before they can watch it.
An unrecognised video format (WMV, AVI, WebM) won’t embed and will look like this:
A recognised and properly embedded video (MP4 in our example) will look like this:
You can play MP4s directly in Slack without needing to download them first.
If your video is of a format that Slack doesn’t know and to make sure it will load and display properly, you can convert it to MP4 using our web app Clipchamp or use our Slack app.
This will also reduce its file size in most cases and thus make the upload to Slack faster too.
What if video files are too large for Slack?
If you’re trying to embed video in Slack and are running into issues, one reason that they may not upload is that they are just too big as Slack limits the file size of uploads to 1 GB.
While this probably won’t stop you from annoying your co-workers with funny GIFs, it may pose issues when sending those important, and significantly larger, work videos.
Thus, here are 3 ways to combat this issue before you embed video in Slack.
1a) Compress your video files with Clipchamp
Clipchamp allows you to compress and convert your video files before embedding them into Slack.
This doesn’t just make it possible to get below the 1GB upload limit but is also very useful to keep your team’s overall file storage size lower as Slack only offers 5GB total file storage for the entire team on the free plan.
Smaller videos upload faster too.
Use clipchamp at clipchamp.com or have a look at our step-by-step guide on how to compress and convert your video files in this previous blog post.
1b) Use Clipchamp’s Slack app
*The Clipchamp Slack app is discontinued
Our free app for Slack compresses videos before they get uploaded into Slack. If your file was too big before, the compression (and conversion to MP4 in the same process) will get it to upload faster.
2) Upload the video to Google Drive and share it from there
Slack’s Google Drive integration makes it possible to upload any kind of file to Gdrive and share it from there into a channel or direct message.
Videos shared from Google Drive won’t embed as playable videos in Slack but your team mates also don’t have to download them to watch them. Instead if they click on the file, they get sent to Google Drive and can watch the video there.
3) Link to an existing YouTube or Vimeo video
Another way to embed esp. larger video files in Slack is to simply share a clip that has already been uploaded to YouTube or Vimeo (or a number of other video platforms).
Sending links to YouTube videos can by done by simply copy and pasting into the message box. Slack will automatically expand the videos and allow anyone to play them on the platform or open them at their original location such as YouTube. If it doesn’t, there are a few possible reasons why:
The link contains no preview data.
You linked to a private page or file.
It was posted by another member of your Slack team within the past hour.
The link is hosted at a service Slack doesn’t support.
http:// was not included.
As with the direct Slack uploads, you can also get your videos onto YouTube faster by compressing & converting them with Clipchamp first.
And that’s it! Easy as pie
See here for more information about Slack and its many features and benefits.
