Troubleshooting Showreels on your Profile

We do not host videos directly on our site, but instead you can embed your video from YouTube or Vimeo into your profile. This basically means copying the direct link to the video from those sites and pasting it into your profile.

For a quick guide to adding a showreel to your profile, see here: How to Add a Showreel to your Profile.

If you have a problem when you try to add a showreel and it does not play, this article explains how to make the showreel work.

There are different ways to embed a video depending on where it’s hosted.

Find your showreel on YouTube and then copy the URL from the address bar. It should be in this format:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXXXX

But… be careful with this URL:

• Make sure the domain is exactly like this: www.youtube.com (anything else and the video will not play)
• Make sure you do not have any other parameters at the end of the URL, just the ?v=XXXXX (where XXXXX is the code of your video)

Go to your Vimeo showreel and copy the URL:

https://vimeo.com/12345

Where 12345 is the number of your video.

Now test it

Above all, once you’ve added a video to your profile and saved the profile, be sure to click on the video button to make sure it works!

And if it doesn’t…

To begin, always make sure your video:

• is not password protected
• is not set to “private”
• can be embedded on other sites (i.e. it’s not set to play only on YouTube or Vimeo, etc)

You might also have these issues:

If your showreel doesn’t show at all, this usually means the link is wrong. Check again the instructions above to make sure the link is accurate.

With YouTube videos you should never use the mobile URL. This is an URL which looks like this:

https://m.youtube.com/...

In other words, there’s an ‘m’ at the beginning. This will play fine on a mobile phone or tablet, but will look strange on a larger device.

Instead, always use the full web url, e.g.

https://www.youtube.com/...

An URL like this will show fine on ALL devices.

A normal YouTube video link looks like this and will start at the very beginning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZOrUgt4nys

But if it has the extra parameter on the end like this, it will not start at the beginning but 10 seconds into the clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZOrUgt4nys&t=10

Make sure your video URL does NOT include the &t=number parameter.

You may have set your video so that it will only play on the YouTube or Vimeo website. In that case, you cannot add it to enCAST (or any other site).

Go to your video on YouTube or Vimeo and change the settings so it can be embedded and will play on any site outside YouTube.

For Vimeo:

1. On your desktop computer, log into your Vimeo account and click on MANAGE VIDEOS > MY VIDEOS
2. Click on the video you want to edit and it opens in a new tab
3. Click on the ADVANCED link on the right of the screen
4. On the new page you can find the settings on the left side GENERAL > PRIVACY
5. Select WHERE CAN THIS BE EMBEDDED and choose ANYWHERE
6. Click on the SAVE button

For YouTube

1. Log into your YouTube channel and click on CONTENT to see all your videos
2. Click on the PEN icon next to the video to edit the details of the video
3. Scroll down the options and click SHOW MORE to see the advanced options
4. Scroll down further and there’s a checkbox called ALLOW EMBEDDING – make sure this is ticked
5. Click the SAVE button at the top

To include a Vimeo hosted video, the URL should look something like this with a number at the end:

https://vimeo.com/374904477

If it doesn’t have a number at the end, this means it is a user profile. You will need to change this to a specific video from your Vimeo profile.

Likewise, if the URL looks like this with an extra string at the end, then something is wrong:

https://vimeo.com/374904477/ee8dsue9du777

This can mean the video is hidden, unrated, or otherwise blocked from sharing.

When you add a video to Vimeo, you need to ‘rate’ it (i.e. confirm whether it contains nudity, profanity, etc). If you do not rate it then the video will not show unless a user is logged into Vimeo.

This means that a CD is unable to browse and view your video which is, of course, not good for you!

To check if you video is rated or not, visit the Vimeo video link on your profile but without logging in to Vimeo, and see if you are able to view your video.

If not, you need to rate your video. To do this simply log into Vimeo and then rate it – you can read how to do this here.

If your video has been flagged as Age Restricted on YouTube it will not play on external sites including enCAST unless the viewer has logged into YouTube and confirmed they are over 16.

If you password protect your showreel on YouTube or Vimeo it will not play to guests (including casting directors browsing for actors). Please make sure your showreel can be seen by everyone to avoid losing work.

Sometimes showreels – especially on YouTube – can be blocked for copyright reasons. If you have permission to use the clip and it is still blocked, then you can try putting your video on Vimeo which is less strict.