With more than 1.5 billion active Facebook users worldwide, it’s by far the most popular social media platform as of now. For this reason, reaching a large audience on this social network is one of the easiest things to do. This, however, requires having the right content to elicit interest from the users.
You have a choice to make from a long list of interesting aspects such photos, videos, GIFs, graphics and even audio files depending on your specific needs. You can upload this content from your device or another online service.
In this article, we’ll focus on the process of uploading videos to your Facebook timeline from different gadgets and platforms. Our focus is to detail out the most common ways to post a video to your Facebook wall and the troubleshooting techniques available when you run into a problem.
How to Post Video on Facebook from YouTube
The method you’ll adopt for sharing the video to your Facebook feed will depend on the gadget you’ll be using. In this case, we have a computer, an iPhone/iPad and Android device as follows:
From Computer
To post a video from YouTube on to your Facebook timeline, follow the steps below:
- Go to youtube.com through your computer’s browser.
- Search for the name of the video you wish to upload to Facebook and hit play.
- As the video plays, there will be a share button (arrow curving to the right) at the bottom right side of it. Click on this arrow.
- In the options that appear for sharing, choose the Facebook option.
- Log in to your Facebook account (if you’re not logged into Facebook on your browser already).
- Choose whether to share the video to your ‘News Feed’ or add the video to your Story by checking the box at the bottom of the sharing page.
- After choosing the destination, choose the ‘Post to Facebook’ option highlighted in blue to post the video on your Facebook page.
The video will appear on your Facebook’s chosen location. When clicked, the video will open in the viewer’s YouTube feed and play from there.
Another method entails the following steps:
- Go to youtube.com through your computer’s browser.
- Type the name of the video you wish to share to Facebook and hit play.
- As the video is playing, copy the URL in the address bar of the video. You can also right-click inside the video then copy its URL.
- Go to your Facebook account, log in then in the area with the box written ‘what’s on your mind,’ paste the URL.
- Wait for a moment for the video snippet to appear before hitting the ENTER button on your keyboard.
- You can add a caption or other item before sharing.
Like the previous method, your viewers will need to open the video in the YouTube page or app if they click on it.
Upload YouTube Video to Facebook that Plays in Facebook Page
At times, you don’t want your Facebook followers leave the page to watch a video from YouTube. In such a case, you’ll need to download the YouTube video to your computer then upload it to Facebook as follows:
- Go to youtube.com through your computer’s browser.
- Type the name of the video you wish to share to Facebook and hit play.
- Copy the video URL and choose an online converting service such as onlineconvert.com to convert it into an MP4, MOV, or another format that can be stored locally on your computer. The format should also be supported by Facebook servers.
- Go to your Facebook timeline then click on the box at the top of the feed with the words ‘what’s on your mind?’
- Click the second icon in the dialog box with the ‘Photo/Video” prompt when you hover the mouse on it.
- Upload the video from your local storage.
The video will play right in your Facebook feed without going to the YouTube page.
NOTE: This method only works for non-copyrighted videos as conversion only occurs on such videos.
From iPhone/iPad
The process is almost the same as when you use a computer save for the fact that mobile devices have apps besides using the browser. The steps are as outlined below.
If you don’t have the YouTube and Facebook apps on your device:
- Go to YouTube.com through your device’s browser.
- Type the name of the video you wish to share to Facebook in the YouTube search box and hit play.
- As it starts playing, you’ll see a share button (arrow curving to the right) at the bottom right. Click on this arrow.
- In the options that appear for sharing, choose the Facebook option.
- Log in to your Facebook account (if you’re not logged into Facebook on your mobile browser).
- Choose whether to share the video to your News Feed or add the video to your Story by checking the box at the bottom of the sharing page.
- After choosing the destination, choose the ‘Post to Facebook’ option highlighted in blue to post the video on to your Facebook page.
Like it was in the computer guide on the same, the video will open in YouTube when your viewers click on it. You can also simply copy the video URL then share it as a post on Facebook.
If you have both the Facebook and YouTube apps installed on your device, the procedure is as follows:
- Visit YouTube either in the browser or from your list of apps.
- Search for the video you wish to share to Facebook.
- If you’re in the app, you can launch the video then hit the ‘Share’ button below the video. You also have the option of not launching the video and instead hit the 3 dots to the right of the video’s title then choose the ‘Share’ option.
- You’ll be presented with the options you can share the video through one of which is Facebook.
- After choosing the Facebook option, tap ‘Next’ in the upper right corner.
- Choose where to share the video with the options being as a Story, on the timeline or as a message to a group or individual.
- Hit the ‘Share’ option in the top right corner to share the video.
The video will be shared with a link to YouTube and it will be played on YouTube if your followers hit the play button.
With the iPhone/iPad sharing option, you can’t share a YouTube video that plays within the app unless you have a way of downloading it that’s independent of the YouTube app. Again, it only works when the video in question isn’t copyrighted. Otherwise, it’ll be an infringement on the rights of the video’s owner.
From Android Device
Sharing a YouTube video from your android device to Facebook is very much like sharing the same on an iPhone thanks to the almost similar interfaces between the apps on these platforms. If you don’t have the apps on your mobile device, you can use the same method you use on your computer. If you have the apps, however, you can follow the same steps used in the iPhone/iPad guide.
Facebook Video Upload Limit, Size & Format
While you can upload any kind of video to your Facebook timeline, there are a few things you need to keep in mind to ensure your video isn’t flagged down or for some other reason prevented from showing up on Facebook.
The aspects to consider include the following:
Limit (size and time)
The largest video you can upload to Facebook is 1.75GB and 45 minutes long. Any video heavier or longer than that won’t get uploaded. That’s about the length of a single series episode but not long enough for a full movie.
Format
As for the video formats, you can upload almost all the known video formats on Facebook, these include 3g2 (mobile video), 3gp (mobile video), 3gpp (mobile video), asf (Windows Media Player), avi (AVI video), dat (MPEG video), divx (DIVX video), dv (DV video), f4v (Flash video), flv (Flash video), gif (Graphics Interchange Format), m2ts (M2TS video), m4v (MPEG-4 Video), mkv (Matroska Format), mod (MOD Video), mov (QuickTime Movie), mp4 (MPEG-4 Video), mpe (MPEG Video), mpeg (MPEG Video), mpeg4 (MPEG-4 Video), mpg (MPEG Video), mts (AVCHD Video), nsv (Nullsoft Video), ogm (Ogg Media Format), ogv (Ogg Video Format), qt (QuickTime Movie), tod (TOD Video), ts (MPEG Transport Stream), vob (DVD Video) and wmv (Windows Media Video).
The best video formats for Facebook videos, however, are the MOV and MP4 ones as recommended by Facebook itself.
Copyright
A copyrighted video means that it legally belongs to another person. With sharing such a video on Facebook, there are two sides to it. On one side is the fact that you can share a copyrighted video on your timeline as long as you don’t make any claims that the video is yours. In fact, you should give credit to the video’s owner to avoid any legal consequences.
On the other side is the fact that sharing the copyrighted content without giving the owner credit for it or using it in a manner to indicate it’s your own is a dangerous path to follow as it can led to serious legal consequences.
Can’t Upload Video to Facebook
When you can’t upload a video to your Facebook timeline, it could be one or several reasons such as the following:
1. Wrong Format and Size
The formats for the videos you can upload to Facebook are listed in the section above. If the video you’re trying to upload isn’t in one of these formats, it’ll not be uploaded. Besides that, you may be trying to upload a video that exceeds the video limit of 1.75GB or 45 minutes, it’ll also not get uploaded.
2. Web Browsers
While Facebook will work with most browsers without an issue, the best ones are the main known web browsers namely, Google Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, Opera and Mozilla Firefox. The non-mainstream browsers can be easily disrupted through corrupted and outdated software which can mess with your user experience. This may limit the uploading and playing of videos on Facebook.
3. Privacy Settings
On some devices, the reason you can’t upload a video or photo to Facebook could be the privacy settings on your device. You have to give Facebook the permission to access your Photos/videos for you to upload a video.
If you didn’t allow that when installing the Facebook app, go to your privacy settings then permit the Facebook app to access your media files.
4. H.264 Codec Incompatibility
While you can upload all the supported video formats to Facebook, the preferred ones are MP4 and MOV as they’re the best when it comes to support from H.264 codecs. This is codec that compresses and decompresses the video and audio files within the file you upload. If the file type you sent can’t be easily used by this codec, it may not be uploaded.
5. Video Specifications
Make sure the video you upload a video with dimensions in multiples of 16px since Facebook automatically rescales the videos you upload when it’s larger than 1280px. As such, the video will be much easier to scale down if it’s in multiples of 16px.
The video you upload also needs to be less than 30fps for the best viewer experience.
