A Word On Video Hosting Sites

I figured it was high-time to let you all into some of the headaches I've experienced with hosting videos here on Patreon this past month. First, some context: This is (obviously) an 18+ Creator profile. For that reason, I am not allowed to directly upload videos straight into the Patreon interface. Another option, is doing a normal post and just putting the video into it as an attachment. But I'm not crazy about just allowing anyone to freely download my videos. I've had that happen with my photos already... and they're all over the internet now.

This leaves embedding. Now, for those that don't know, that basically means I have to host my video on a third party site, and then link to it here. (Patreon calls it "embedding the URL.")

When I first started posting videos here, I chose Vimeo as my main video hosting site, because it works very conveniently with Patreon. The thumbnail preview is big and clean. It plays with no issues. And I can even customize how the video appears in the post. However, barely a week into using Vimeo, my account got banned and they gave me a full refund.

I then went to YouTube, but quickly started getting warnings from them about my videos. YouTube also makes you all have to have an account to log in (since my videos have to be set to Unlisted). Mind you, if I made them Public, then anyone and his mother could access them, and being a member of this Patreon would prove moot.

That leaves the dregs... Sites most of you have never heard of. Sites with names like SproutVideo... Wistia... Vidyard... Streamable... and Gumlet.

All of them but Gumlet have embedding issues with Patreon. The videos appear too large... blown up... with about 30% of the top of the frame cut off.

So yeah, Gumlet was what I began using. And I've used it for most of this year. The previews aren't that sexy. Not nearly as nice and sleek as Vimeo makes them appear in posts. But they were reliable...

Until a week ago.

For some reason, the thumbnail image previews from Gumlet that would appear here were glitchy looking, cut-off, showed a question mark icon... or worse... nothing at all. Just a black box. (Picture how bad that would look as a member, viewing my feed.) After troubleshooting this and contacting their Help desk to no end, I finally gave up.

So yeah, for the past week I've been all over the map. Some videos I use YouTube for. Others, I use those alternate sites I mentioned. But finally, today, I just went back to Vimeo. It meant I had to sign up under a new account. But there's been no issues so far. At least, not that I'm aware of. Today's video (the alternate version of the Sailor Moon Mask Installation clip), is the first one I've posted. Let me know if there's any issues playing it. If not, then I'll go ahead and sign up for the Premium account for the year. And I'll just hope I don't get banned again. :/

Anyway, this is a long-winded way of letting you know what's been going on behind the scenes. Hopefully it's not affecting your experience too much. Patreon seriously needs to give 18+ creators more options.