Using Vimeo SOP

This document outlines the principles and procedures for CLCs and CLMs on best practices for using Vimeo.

At The Austin Stone, we have a Vimeo Business account that gives us 7TB of storage. That’s a lot of storage space! This means we can house content like our entire sermon archive, various resources, and announcement/communication videos for your congregation or ministry. 

Logging Into Vimeo

We’ve created two unique logins—for both CLCs and CLMs to use as part of “The Austin Stone” team. We’ll be using the CLC login as an example. Using your specific login credentials, you’ll log in like you would to any other website. Once logged in, you should see a page that looks like this.

Now, your initial thought may be, “Great, I’ll just upload my video here.” While that may be easy enough, there’s one more important step you need to do before you can do that. 

From the dashboard screen:

  1. Navigate to the upper-left sidebar.
  2. Select the menu item that reads “Team Library.”

Uploading Your Video

You’re now in “Team Library” workspace. To upload a video:

  1. Navigate to the left-hand navigation sidebar.
  2. Select the folder that corresponds to your congregation or ministry.
  3. In the upper-right corner, select “New > Upload Video.”

Select your video wherever it’s located on your computer and upload it by following the prompts onscreen. Depending on the duration of your video, this may take a few minutes. This is a good time to set your “Privacy” settings from the dropdown menu, depending on who your audience is. 

Example:

  • A For the Nations video will likely be password protected.
  • A video for a Women’s event may need a private link that’s still accessible.

For more information on “Privacy” settings, you can view the Common Questions section below.

Once your video is finished uploading, make sure to add a title and a short description of what your video is about. 

Example:

  • Title: What Will Heaven Feel Like?
  • Description: Ray Ortuland spends time looking at passages of Isaiah that show us how, in heaven, we’ll be human, with Christ giving us everything we’ve most deeply longed for all our lives.

Just know if you’re still struggling, that’s totally fine! Just let someone from the Communications Team know by filling out the request form here. We’ll be happy to help you. 

Common Questions

How do I add captions to my video?

Good news! Rev has integrated with Vimeo to provide automatic closed captions for your videos, so you don’t have to. However, if it’s absolutely paramount to order captions for your video, you must create an account with Rev and submit your Vimeo link for “captions.”

To do this, you will:

  1. Select “WebVTT” for your export format.
  2. From the left-hand navigation sidebar, click “Distribution.”
  3. Scroll down to “Subtitles.”
  4. Click the “+” button.
  5. Select your exported caption file.

If you need help ordering captions, please submit a Creative Request form.

What should I name my video?

The simpler, the better! Refrain from lengthy titles (50-60 characters) and drive for clarity! We want the audience to know exactly what they’re clicking into. This will also help your team in the long run in terms of organization and video archiving!

How do I change the privacy settings on my video to private or password-protected?

In your video dashboard:

  1. Navigate to “General” in the left-hand navigation sidebar.
  2. Look under “Privacy.”
  3. Select an option from the dropdown menu titled “Who can watch?”

How long can my videos remain on Vimeo, and what can I do to help optimize storage?

While we wish we could keep every single video in our account, the reality is that storage sizes add up, and over time, we’ve come up against storage allotments and have had to increase our capacity, which isn’t cheap. 

If your video needs to remain on Vimeo, please contact us if this is the case. Otherwise, to steward storage well, we recommend deleting your video 1 to 2 weeks after your intended use case (email, social media post, etc). 

Our team has a recurring task at the beginning of each month to assess our Vimeo storage, and we will delete videos based on original upload dates.