Give our Compression Guidelines a thoughtful browsing, then try uploading again using any new settings you may have adjusted. If you're still having trouble, visit our Help Center so our friendly support team can give you a hand. Or all their hands.

We all love browser extensions — they can add much needed functionality and make our days more enjoyable and productive. However sometimes these extensions (also known as “add-ons”) can interfere with the way a website is designed to work. Rude. The Staff may ask you to temporarily disable extensions when troubleshooting, in case they're the cause of any issues. Take a look at the respective article below for instructions on how to do this in your browser.

• Google Chrome
• Safari
• Firefox
• Internet Explorer

Vimeo uses square pixels when converting your video. You will need to export your videos with square pixels and manually set your aspect ratio to 853x480 for widescreen DV, or 1280x720 for high definition. Read our Compression Guidelines for more information.

No, Vimeo does not limit your uploading speed in any way — we take as much bandwidth as your Internet Service Provider will allow.

The only limit on uploads is your weekly quota. (For example, Plus members can upload up to 5GB per week.)

​If your uploads seem slower than expected, you can read more about that here.

In general, the amount of time it takes to upload a video to Vimeo is outside of our control. We do not limit our members’ upload speeds — we take as much bandwidth as your Internet Service Provider (ISP) will allow. If your upload is slower than expected, it could be due to multiple factors, including:

• Lower overall upload speeds provided by your particular Internet plan
• Time of day / peak hours of usage with your Internet Service Provider (ISP)
• Increased traffic on your local network
• Incorrect network, firewall, or router settings

When testing your upload speeds, keep in mind that online “speed tests” are not always accurate. The results you receive from these tests may be skewed by the location of the test server, as well as the factors listed above.

When a video appears to be "cut off" on Vimeo, it is usually due to some kind of corruption with the source file. To start, try watching your original source file on your computer (in a program like Quicktime or VLC) to ensure that it plays back without issue. If everything looks good, re-upload the file and see whether the new version is still truncated. (Keep in mind that you can delete videos uploaded during your quota week to return that space to your account.)

If the issue persists, export a fresh version of the file from your editing or encoding software and upload this new file to Vimeo.

Following the steps above almost always fixes this problem. That said, if none of the above resolves the issue, please let us know and we'll be happy to take a closer look.

First things first, make sure you uploaded an HD video. Standard HD resolution is 720 x 1280, but videos come in all different shapes and sizes.

Vimeo uses the overall area of the video to determine whether or not a HD version will be created. If the area of your video is great than 700 x 700 (490000 pixels square), an HD version of your video will be created.

When you upload an HD video, we display the SD version first while we create the HD version. If an unusual amount of time has passed and the HD version is still not available, make sure you are following our Compression Guidelines and try again.

Vimeo allows Basic members to upload only one HD video per week, so if you upload two HD videos within the same week, only the first will show in HD. The other will appear in SD only.

If your video isn't displaying correctly or you're seeing a weird error message following the conversion process, it may mean that the video you uploaded includes a video or audio codec that Vimeo does not support.

Go2Meeting, Canopus HQ, and Apple Intermediate Codec are examples of codecs that Vimeo does not support. These files will need to be re-encoded before you upload them.

To ensure your videos will convert beautifully, re-compress your video so that it matches our Video Compression Guidelines.

For a number of different reasons, video conversion may sometimes be temporarily backed up on Vimeo. When this happens, Vimeo developers immediately jump on the case to help speed up the process and the system usually catches up within a matter of hours.

In these situations, there is no need to replace or re-upload your file. Doing this will actually move your conversion request further back in the queue.

If you're a Plus or PRO member, your videos awaiting conversion will still be at the front of the line and among the first to be converted once the process catches up. Thank you for your patience!

The width of the video player on all Vimeo.com pages is 960px. Videos that display at a narrower width will need to be pillarboxed on either side to create an overall width of 960px. Videos can be displayed without pillarboxing when embedded on other websites.

If you're having audio problems, try exporting your video again according to our recommended compression settings.

Occasionally issues with black or blank frames being dropped or lost can crop up. This is because editing programs tend to drop the frame rate in clip portions that are black to 1FPS, which can then be interpreted as blank by the Vimeo system and cause sync issues. An easy fix is to insert a "slug" (also known as a black shape or image) to keep the frame rate normal in the editor, therefore keeping your videos and our machines happy!

Your video must be at least 200KB in size in order to upload to Vimeo. This is because many people accidentally create "Reference movies" when trying to export from QuickTime and other video editing programs. Reference files don't contain any actual video, just links to the files. When exporting from QuickTime, always choose the "Save as self-contained" option.

If you're using a codec that Vimeo does not support, like G2M3 or Canopus HQ, you'll need to re-compress your video using a supported codec.

The best way to re-encode your file is to re-export it from the program you used to create it. If possible, please modify your export settings to match our Compression Guidelines.

If your editing or encoding software does not offer the required customizations (or you don’t have access to the software), you can use a free program like Handbrake or MPEG Streamclip to re-encode your file.

Here are some handy tutorials that show you how to use these programs:

• Handbrake Tutorial
• MPEG Streamclip