Submitting YouTube Video
The Internet Services team of Communications and Public Affairs manages Lehigh University's YouTube channel as part of the institution's overall Web presence. In addition to creating and publishing content on behalf of the university, we also accept video submissions from the Lehigh community that strive to add value to our academic mission and present the university in a positive and authentic way.
Is the video you want to submit a good fit for Lehigh's YouTube channel? A good way to decide is to look at the types of video already published to our YouTube channel located at www.youtube.com/lehighuofficial.
Here are a few best practice examples created by the Lehigh community:
Preparing and submitting your video content for publishing on Lehigh's YouTube channel
TIP: Contact Internet Services staff as soon as you know you will be creating a video for submission and provide an approximate date when you would like the video to appear live on Lehigh's YouTube channel.
Technical specifications:
- Video content files should be provided in either MP4 format (also known as MPEG-4) or M4V format that does not contain DRM copyright protection. Videos created with digital video cameras such as the Flip (Cisco) or PlayTouch (Kodak), high quality smartphones, and other digital recording devices are generally created in one of these formats. The manual for your recording device should specify the file type of the videos it creates. If your video is not in one of these two formats, see the list of resources below for software to convert it to the correct file type.
- The most popular videos are short in length (1-5 minutes long). However, an individual file must be less than 20 GB in size. Long running videos or larger files will need to be split into multiple video clips prior to submission.
- YouTube supports both standard definition and high definition (HD) video. HD is preferred. Recommended aspect ratio for standard definition is 640 x 480 pixels. Recommended aspect ratio for HD is 1920 x 1080 pixels (1080p) or 1280 x 720 pixels.
- Preferred video codec: H.264 or MPEG-2. The manual for your recording device should specify which codec the videos are using.
Describing and tagging your work:
- A title and description (provided as a text file or contained in the body of an email) must accompany each video clip submitted:
- Title must be fewer than 40 characters in length; otherwise, it may not appear correctly in some locations within the channel.
- Description must be between 100-700 characters in length, and can include hyperlinks to related information.
- Lehigh University should appear at least once in either the title or description (preferably the title) so that it can be found via the YouTube search engine.
- Optional items: include tags (keywords separated by a comma that describe the video and help your video content to be found via the YouTube search engine); date and location of when and where video was recorded.
Methods for submitting video to Internet Services:
- Preferred Method: Upload video file(s) to Lehigh's Dropbox. Enter "Internet Services" in Recipient Name field and "inis@lehigh.edu" in Recipient Email field. File size limit is 800MB.
- Alternative Method: Burn video files onto a data formatted DVD. Internet Services will need extra processing time for this method, so please plan accordingly.
Important information about copyright:
- Video submissions should be of original work. If video was authored by someone other than the person submitting the video, Internet Services staff requires written permission from the video's creator before it can be published to Lehigh's YouTube channel.
Video authoring resources, tutorials and utilities: