Web Story Video & Picture Storage

@lifeinjordosworld Thanks for getting in touch!

Videos and images uploaded for Web Stories are stored in your WordPress Media Library, just like images and videos that upload for blog posts and other content throughout your WordPress site. These need to remain in the Media Library in order for your Web Stories to properly display after they’ve been published – if you delete media from the Library, they will not display for users, so your Stories will not work correctly.

There are ways to store media content outside of WordPress but still be able to use it in your Web Stories and other WordPress content types through the Media Library. This is commonly called “offloading,” and you can find more information about it via Google search. Essentially, offloading allows you to use the WordPress Media Library as usual, but actually store the media on a different server.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.

@lifeinjordosworld One thing to note that I forgot to mention: in the newest version of the plugin (v1.60.0), we’ve enabled a video optimization feature by default. This feature automatically optimizes and compresses videos that are uploaded to the Media Library within the Web Stories Editor. We’re also working on adding a feature that allows you to click a button in the Web Stories Editor to optimize a video that was previously uploaded to your Library.

For context, the optimization feature does significantly compress videos – in our testing, a 37 MB file became 4 MB.

Let me know if have any other questions on this. Thank you!

Hi Bethany, just to clarify: with this feature, I can upload videos straight to the library in the plugin and videos will compress? Rather than compressing them prior to uploading? Thanks!

@lifeinjordosworld Yes, that’s correct! Videos that are uploaded to the Media Library while you are in the Web Stories editor will be compressed and optimized. We’re also currently working on a feature that will allow you to optimize videos from within the editor that were previously uploaded to the Media Library.

Let us know if you have any other questions!

How would one pull from an outside storage location into the story?

@slashedbeauty If you’d like to open a new support topic we’d be happy to assist with your case individually. Thank you!

Hi @lifeinjordosworld,

Following up here as we’re working through some options on storing videos and I wanted to hear your thoughts.

In the past few months, we have implemented to new features to address concerns around video hosting bandwidth:

1. Video Optimization –?Videos uploaded to the Media Library within the Web Stories Editor are automatically optimized, and you also now have the option to optimize a video that was previously uploaded in the Media Library. In our testing, a 50MB video is reduced to <1MB in file size, about the same size as a high-res image.
2. With the new Video Cache option, which can be turned in Web Stories > Settings > Video Cache, your site will automatically serve videos from Google’s servers (instead of your own) which should eliminate bandwidth costs for most videos.

With these new features, have your concerns about video bandwidth addressed? Or do you also still want the ability to upload videos elsewhere and link to them within Web Stories? If so, why?

We’d really appreciate any feedback here – we want to make sure that the updates that we’ve made or plan to make will directly address your needs.

Thanks so much!

Hi Bethany,

Thank you for following up about this! I love the video optimization tool – it is so helpful for saving space. I didn’t know about the video cache option as well – are there any negatives to having the videos stored elsewhere? Do people typically implement both of these or just choose one? Thank you so much for sharing these!

Glad to hear the optimization has been helpful!

I didn’t know about the video cache option as well – are there any negatives to having the videos stored elsewhere?

Nope! This is the way that videos actually work when a user is viewing your story via Discover on Google. This option just allows your videos to be hosted by Google for the stories as viewed on your own website, as well.

Do people typically implement both of these or just choose one?

So far these are both pretty new, so we don’t have any real data on this. However, they’re really two different approaches to the same issue: the Google hosting option allows videos to be offloaded completely, and the optimization option allows them to still be on your server, but smaller in size via optimization.

All this said, it sounds like these two options have addressed the storage issues for you, is that right? Or would you still be interested in the ability to offload your videos somewhere else, like Amazon Web Storage?

Thank you!

Hey Bethany,

Yes I would say these suggestions solve my storage issues. Thank you!

Quick question that relates to the two options: I want to try having my cached on Google — I went into the Web Story settings and selected the “video cache” option. Do I also need to have “video optimization” right above it checked? Or just one?

Thanks so much!

@lifeinjordosworld Sounds great, thanks for following up!

You can check both to be safe –?if for whatever reason a video is not able to be loaded via Google cache (Video Cache) it will be optimized on your server instead (Video Optimization).

Awesome, I now have both checked. Thank you for the help!

Sure thing! I’ll mark this topic as resolved, but if you have any other questions, feel free to create a new topic.