Cloudinary video uploads

A video sells a car, a house or a guitar better than photos alone. With Cloudinary connected, you can add a Video field to your posting form: members upload a video from their device, it is stored in your Cloudinary account, and it plays on the listing page.

Videos are large, so they aren’t stored with your marketplace. Cloudinary stores and streams them, and its free plan covers a modest number of videos. Check Cloudinary’s pricing as your marketplace grows.

Set up Cloudinary

1. Create an account at cloudinary.com.
2. On the Cloudinary dashboard, note your Cloud name, API Key and API Secret.
3. In Cloudinary’s settings, open Upload and add an upload preset:
   • Set Signing mode to Unsigned. Your site uploads straight from the member’s browser, which needs an unsigned preset.
   • Recommended: limit the allowed formats to video formats such as mp4, mov and webm, and set a maximum file size, so the field can’t be used to upload anything else.
   • Note the preset’s name.
4. In your admin panel, go to Integrations and open Cloudinary.
5. Fill in the four fields (see the table below) and click Save.

Setting	What it does
Cloudinary API Key	With the secret, lets your site delete a listing’s video from Cloudinary when the listing is deleted.
Cloudinary API Secret	The secret that goes with the API key. Keep it private.
Cloudinary Cloud Name	Your Cloudinary account’s name. Needed for uploads.
Cloudinary Cloud Preset	The name of your unsigned upload preset. Needed for uploads.

The cloud name and preset are enough for uploads. Add the API key and secret too, otherwise videos stay in your Cloudinary account (and count towards your storage) after their listings are deleted.

Add a video field to the posting form

1. Go to Listings › Custom Fields and click New field.
2. Choose the type Video, give it a name and a label such as “Video”, and choose the categories it applies to.
3. Click Create field.

See Custom fields for the other options.

What members see

In the posting form, the field shows an Upload Video button. It opens Cloudinary’s upload window, where the member picks one video from their device. When the upload finishes, a preview appears in the form. When the listing is published, the video plays on the listing page with the usual play controls.

Each Video field holds one video. To allow more, add more Video fields.

Listing pages play the video as MP4. Most phones record MP4 or MOV, which play in all common browsers, but some formats don’t. If members report videos that don’t play, add an incoming transformation to your upload preset that converts uploads to MP4.

Good to know

• To check the set-up, open the posting form of a category that has your Video field and try an upload. The Integrations page doesn’t mark Cloudinary as Connected.
• Videos are public: anyone with the link can watch them, like the photos of a listing.
• If you remove the keys, existing videos keep playing (they are still on Cloudinary), but members can’t upload new ones.

Related guides

• Custom fields — every field type and its options.
• Files from Google Drive and Dropbox — let members attach documents.
• Photos — photo settings for listings.