Patreon Video overview

Learn how to upload and share videos directly on Patreon, away from trolls and external algorithms. This article will help you understand video hosting limits, follow guidelines for sharing your work, upload your first video, and optimize the viewing experience for your supporters.

Who can use Patreon Video

You may have access to Patreon Video if you meet the following criteria: 

• You have published your Patreon
• Your Patreon is in the All Audiences category
• Your Patreon is and remains in good standing

Patreon Video is not currently available to creators who make 18+ content; however, we hope to expand eligibility to more creators in the future. All creators can continue to link or embed videos from other platforms. 

You can check your eligibility in your Settings.

Patreon Video hosting and storage limits

Resolution limits

Creators can currently upload video at 720p or 1080p resolutions. For members, Patreon automatically optimizes viewing resolution for both native video and live streaming content. By default, viewers will see content at 720p resolution, though this may be adjusted to 480p in cases where 720p provides no additional benefit. Viewers can manually toggle to higher resolutions when available.
 

Media storage and creation guidelines

• Draft media storage: Both Patreon video and livestreaming media files in draft status will be deleted after six months
• Published media: Published Patreon video content is stored indefinitely, maintaining our current policy
• Monthly upload limits: To prevent abuse and ensure fair platform usage, creators are limited to 100 hours of media per month across both Patreon video uploads and livestreaming. This limit applies monthly and is separate from any lifetime upload restrictions. Exceptions may be made for new creators with substantial existing content libraries
• Upload limits for creators with no paying members: Creators build their upload capacity as they grow their community. New creators start with 100 hours total, which expands to 100 hours monthly once they gain their first paying fan. To maintain monthly upload limits, creators need at least one paying fan within the past 90 days—otherwise, the limit returns to 100 hours total
• Early access creators: Creators who enabled Patreon Video early access before June 21, 2023, were given 500 hours of uploaded videos. Creators who participated in Patreon Video beta can track their total video usage in your Settings

Content & volume guidelines

Content Guidelines

• Your video content needs to be appropriate for all ages
• Like all content, videos need to meet our Community Guidelines. To keep Patreon safe for everyone, we may need to take down videos that don't meet guidelines or remove your early access

Volume Guidelines

• We may also review your account if we notice suspicious activity, like if there is a higher-than-typical number of hours uploaded within a month

Patreon Video features

• On-platform previews – Automatically generate previews out of your videos to convert more fans into members
• Custom thumbnails – Select a still from your video or upload a new image as a custom thumbnail
• Upload from the mobile app – Upload videos up to 10 minutes on iOS and up to 2 minutes on Android directly from your phone camera or photo library
• Insights – Analytics for your posts to show you which members watch your content and what makes them engage
• Async video updates – You can navigate away from the publishing flow while waiting for a video to process. Simply fill in the post details and publish your video post. The video will process in the background and publish automatically once finished. You'll be notified when your post is live. If there are any issues with processing or uploading, we'll notify you about why it failed so you can make the necessary changes
• Distribute video audio to RSS – When creating a video post, you can turn on the Add to podcast option in the post editor to distribute audio from your videos directly to your members' RSS feeds. Learn more about enabling audio RSS feeds for your members

How to upload directly to Patreon

•  

  1. Select Create from the left navigation and select Post
  2. Select Video as your media type, then drag and drop your file or browse your computer to upload it
  3. Add a title (required) and, if you'd like, a description
  4. Set your thumbnail — click the player box image to upload your own artwork, or once the video is processed, slide through it to select a still
  5. In the right-hand sidebar, you'll find some of the post settings, including but not limited to:
     • Audience — choose who can access the post (required)
     • Add to podcast to distribute your video's audio to your members' RSS feeds. Learn more about Enabling audio RSS feeds for your members
     • Make this a drop to release it live with real-time chat. Learn more about Drops
     • Video preview — if your video is at least 2 minutes, we'll generate a 30-second preview by default, and you can adjust it here. Learn more about customizing your video preview
     • Organize it with Tags or add it to a Collection to help fans find your work
  6. Click Publish now, or Schedule it for later. You can also exit the editor and we'll save a draft

  You don't have to wait for processing to finish — you can publish (or schedule) and navigate away, and your video will keep processing in the background, publishing automatically once it's ready. If your video is at least 2 minutes, we'll also generate a 30-second preview to attract more members. We'll notify you when your post is live, or if anything failed and why.

• If you have early access to Patreon Video, you can now create, upload, and share videos for up to 10 minutes on iOS and up to 2 minutes on Android, all from the Patreon app. Here's how to share your first video from the app:
  1. Tap  from the bottom menu and select Post
  2. Tap Video , then choose to take a video, choose a file, or select from your photo library
  3. Add a title (required) and, if you'd like, a description
  4. Tap Settings at the top to set up your post — here you'll find some of the post settings, including but not limited to Audience (who can access the post), Tags, and Collection
  5. Tap Publish now, or schedule it for later

Playback controls

There are several ways in which members can interact with videos to enhance their experience:

Note that there may be a slight delay when closed captions are available for a newly uploaded video due to processing time (it could take minutes up to an hour, depending on how long the video is)

Patreon Video previews

With video previews, you can highlight moments from your video posts to help convert more fans into members. A video preview is a short clip that plays at the beginning of your video, and encourages fans to join your membership to watch the rest of the video and unlock your posts.

Video previews are automatically enabled for newly created video posts on July 27, 2022, and after. 

Editing your video preview

• Click Edit duration for the preview editor to appear. You'll be able to choose a consecutive clip from a minimum of 10s to a maximum of 120s (2 minutes) from your uploaded video
• New video posts will have a 30 second preview by default
• You can retroactively create a preview for an existing Patreon Video post by visiting your Published posts and clicking the Edit link for a post
• You can disable a Preview with the teaser video switch on the right-hand side of the post editor

Video preview specifications

• Your video must be at least 2 minutes in length for a preview to be created
• Video previews can be between 10 seconds and 2 minutes long
• Video previews cannot be created for posts made for everyone
• Previews will not automatically play
• Consumption of previews is limited to desktop and mobile web, native mobile is not currently supported

Resolve an issue with Patreon Video

If there are any issues with processing or uploading, we'll notify you about why it failed so you can make the necessary changes. If you encounter an issue while uploading a video, please try these troubleshooting steps to minimize processing time:

• Ensure that the output file is 1080p definition or less
• Ensure the file uses the H.264 video CODEC
• Make sure that the total file bitrate is below 8mbps
• Check that your color depth is 8-bit 4:2:0 or below

For a more detailed guide on optimizing video uploads for Patreon, check out our comprehensive article on How to limit processing time for your videos.

FAQ

• At this stage, Patreon Video is available to launched creators whose content is intended and appropriate for audiences of all ages. Our goal is for Patreon Video to ultimately be available to all of our creators, and we are hard at work building additional infrastructure and tooling that can make that possible for 18+ creators. We will keep you updated as we work towards that goal.

  Additional information about these categories can be found here, including how to recategorize your Patreon.

  All creators can continue to link or embed videos from other platforms.

• Your account is in good standing if it has not been flagged for potentially fraudulent behavior. Additionally, your account activity must comply with Patreon's Terms and Community Guidelines.
• Patreon's Terms and Community Guidelines apply to Patreon Video. As always, Patreon is for creators who put something original out into the world and, as a creator, you may not post creations that infringe on others' intellectual property rights. At this time we do not permit content with any nudity on Patreon Video, even if it would otherwise be acceptable under our Community Guidelines.
• We support most video formats with 1080p or of smaller definition
  • There is no file size limit; however, videos cannot exceed 12 hours in length
  • Most creators will have a limit of 100 or 500 hours of uploaded video. You can check how many hours of uploaded videos you have left in your settings
• For members, Patreon automatically optimizes viewing resolution for both native video and live streaming content. By default, viewers will see content at 720p resolution, though this may be adjusted to 480p in cases where 720p provides no additional benefit. Viewers can manually toggle to higher resolutions when available.
  
  Fans' experience will depend on a couple of factors:
  • Player size relative to video source size. For example, if the video source is 320 x 240 and the player size is 640 x 480, the player will stretch the video to fill in the dimensions. In that process, the quality of the video degrades
  • The member's internet bandwidth
• At this time, we do not provide migration support for videos. That said, we'd be interested to know if this is something you'd like to see — please let us know if this is blocking you from using Patreon Video.

• Closed captioning supports a wide range of languages, including:

  Afrikaans, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Maori, Marathi, Nepali, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Welsh.