We know how frustrating it can be when you’re finally ready to share your work, only to have technical issues. We’re here to help with our recommendations for resolving common issues that creators write into our team with.
In this article, we’ll go through:
- Privacy settings for YouTube videos
- Privacy settings for Vimeo videos
- What to do if your video shows an error when played (YouTube)
“Video unavailable” for mobile
If patrons are reporting receiving the message, “Video unavailable” for your YouTube videos in the Patreon app, it’s likely because there is music in your video that YouTube has licensed for you.
YouTube adds licenses to videos that contain licensed music. Doing this allows YouTube to keep your video up, and not remove the videos for licensing violations. This also means the videos will not play in embeds such as our Patreon iOS app.
Note: Patrons using Android devices will not run into this issue. Android opens YouTube videos in the YouTube app, so there’s no issue with embedding.
Can I fix this?
You can remove the licensing limitation from your video by muting the portion of your video with the claimed song. Learn more about muting portions of your video, by clicking on this link for Google's resource.
Privacy settings for YouTube
If you're using YouTube as your 3rd party hosting site, there are a few settings you can enable to ensure that patrons can view your videos on desktop, and on the Patreon app.
With YouTube, we recommend publishing your video as Unlisted. Additionally, there are a couple of YouTube default Advanced settings that you'll want to keep as-is (below):
With YouTube, we recommend publishing your video as Unlisted. Additionally, there are a couple of YouTube default Advanced settings that you'll want to keep as-is (below):
- Keep the License and rights ownership field on the default Standard YouTube License. If you change this, your videos will not play on Desktop or on the app for patrons.
- In the Distribution options setting be sure to leave Allow embedding checked.
As quick tool, your YouTube video advanced settings should be like this:
Note: If you're finding that your video is "Unavailable" on the app in particular, you'll want to double check your licensing on YouTube. YouTube may add additional copyright licensing to a video that uses music from different artists. This license prevents embedded players within apps from playing these videos outside of their own app or website. You can learn more about music in videos hosted by YouTube, by clicking on the YouTube guide here.
Privacy settings for Vimeo
When editing the privacy settings for your videos on Vimeo, there are few things we recommend doing to ensure that your videos play for your patrons when viewed on desktop, and the Patreon app.
1. In the Who can watch? field, we recommend selecting either: Anyone, or People with the private link. If you select any of the other options in the Who can watch field, be sure to whitelist the domain patreon.com, so that embedded videos can be played. Read through #2 for more details.
2. In the Where can this be embedded? field of your Vimeo privacy settings. We recommend allowing embedding Anywhere.
If you pay for Vimeo, you may also have the option to whitelist your video only for patreon.com. To do this, select the option to allow embedding on Specific domains, you'll want to add www.patreon.com as a domain (click on the + plus sign to add it).
Here's what will populate once you've given patreon.com permission to embed your video. Once added, it will populate under the field where you can remove the permission by clicking the "x" next to patreon.com.