I have been searching around the forum, apparently INAT doesnt allow video uploads, I have this video I uploaded to youtube that I want to post. Is there some sort of rules or guidelines for posting?
This youtube channel is exclusive for my land, the video only shows images of a humming bird. So I guess there is no issue there.
But I just want to make sure,
this is the video I want to link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l83yvbeV6OM
That’s perfectly fine (and often encouraged) to put in your observation description.
You can post stills from your video (I use screenshots of mine) on iNaturalist.org and put the video link there.
iNat does not support video, and has no plan to, and the iNat Forum is for discussion.
Nice hummingbird, and beautiful flowers!
You can also sometimes use a simple GIF if the clip is small enough and works okay within the limits of file size and smoothness.
Like this one I took of a bat being attacked by a grackle one sunny afternoon:
https://www.inaturalist.ca/observations/155248682
One of the things about Gifs is that they only play on a desktop browser, not on a phone.
I just tried one of my animated gifs (in an observation) on my phone and it worked. I am, however, accessing the website on my phone - not using the app. Perhaps that’s a distinction?
Good question. I so rarely see GIFs posted that I only tested mine on a desktop. I just noticed that it didn’t work on the Android app.
Cool! And it played on my iPhone.
That’s true though, I use the website via phone…
Here’s the one that works on my phone:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/256590081
I have accessed that observation on my desktop. I’m not tech savvy enough to know if it could be cached by my google browser on my computer and then the cached version accessed by my phone. I also have a relatively new phone (Pixel 8 Pro) if that would make a difference.
I don’t have access to any photo/video processing software. Depending on the video file type, I can do the necessary clipping and conversion using free online sites. But it’s pretty fussy. And, in my experience, you can only get a few seconds of animation before you hit the max upload size limit. So I only consider it worth it when one can’t get any good sense of the organism or its identity without it. If it’s just behavioral, I tend towards linking to a video (which I host in Google Photos account)
This recent thread may be of some use/interest:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/platform-to-add-video-type-observations/59947
It’s also good to note that staff have suggested that support for animated gifs will likely end at some point (the ability to add them is more of a loophole than a feature) so I wouldn’t recommend creating gif or especially gif only observations.