If you have a pre-existing website and just want to pop a monetized video into it, Pivotshare’s Embed Player is the perfect solution. All you have to do is visit your Publisher Console, find the video you’d like to embed and click the “Embed Code” button underneath the corresponding preview image. Copy the resulting code and Paste it into your site wherever you see fit. Voila, the embed is live.

When you upload a video to your Publisher Console, it is disabled by default. This is done because simply uploading a video doesn’t mean it’s ready for selling. We don’t want to make decisions for you, so we rely on you to enable videos as you see fit. To do this, find the video(s) in question in the Publisher Console under the “Video” section. Toggle them “on” and they should appear on your Channel, ready for purchase. If for some reason this doesn’t work, feel free to contact our support team. Otherwise, also try checking your Encoding Queue, as sometimes videos can finish encoding but require more information before they’re ready for primetime.

If you don’t want to offer a subscription service to your customers, this can be disabled in your Publisher Console under the Channel Setup area. Please note that if any customers have purchased a subscription, you will not be able to turn the subscription setting off until your active subscriber count is zero.

If you are trying to upload images to your Channel, be they a new logo, a video thumbnail, etc, check to make sure the image you are uploading meets the minimum size requirements mentioned in the upload window. Also please be sure that any images you upload are in either JPG/JPEG or PNG format. If you’re certain that you’re doing everything properly but we messed something up, please contact us and let us know.

By default, all Pivotshare channels are given a subdomain address, such as yoursubdomain.pivotshare.com. Many publishers are happy with this solution, but if you would like to have a custom domain name enabled for your account, please contact us and we’ll help you out.

Because people’s computer setups tend to differ greatly, there could be a number of reasons why a given customer might not be able to access your channel, but the most common issue we’ve seen is related to how you may be sharing your Pivotshare Channel’s url. Please make sure that any time you create a link to your channel you DO NOT place a “www” in front of the URL. In other words, www.yoursubdomain.pivotshare.com is WRONG, while yoursubdomain.pivotshare.com is RIGHT.

If you’ve purchased access to a video or a file attachment and want to download it, make sure you’re signed in, then play the video back. In the player window, click on the Cloud icon in the toolbar at the bottom of the player. This will bring up a menu of downloadable items for you to select from.

When videos are made available for rental or purchase, it is the videos’ publisher who decides how long the video is available to the customer. So, for example, a publisher might offer a video for rental and set the expiration window to 5 days, meaning any customer who rents the video has 5 days to watch it as many times as they want, but after those 5 days are up the video is no longer accessible without being paid for again. Similarly, publishers are responsible for making their videos active or inactive, meaning a publisher may choose to disable a video that you have paid for. While we at Pivotshare cannot control what publishers do, we’re happy to discuss options with you to correct any issues you may encounter.

Similarly to streaming video expiration windows, publishers can set the number of downloads a video can have as well as the window in which those downloads can be made. For example, a video can be set to have 3 downloads and a download window of 5 days. If that download limit is reached and/or the download window expires, the downloads will no longer be available to you without another purchase. Again, this is a setting that is determined by publishers.

Video buffering is typically caused by slow internet connections and higher-quality videos being streamed simultaneously. Pivotshare renders all videos uploaded by publishers at a variety of bitrates to help reduce buffering as much as possible, but ultimately we are still limited by the customer’s internet connection. If you’re experiencing buffering during video playback, try making sure there are no other videos playing or downloads happening, and also make sure you’re not uploading any files to any web services. Additionally, we recommend trying different browsers. We’ve found Google Chrome to be the most reliable and stable browser for video watching.

If you’d like to alter your purchase, please contact us and we'll see what we can do.

Due to a limitation placed on iPhones and iPads by Apple, files cannot be downloaded from the web browser onto the device itself (except for static images). If and when Apple allows video downloads, we will be sure to implement this functionality as soon as possible. Until then, the best way to get a downloaded video file onto an iPhone or iPad is to use iTunes to sync the video file onto the device or to use a 3rd-party app like Dropbox or Google Drive to sync the files that way.

If you’d like to cancel a subscription to a Pivotshare-hosted Channel, simply sign into the Channel itself, then navigate to the drop-down menu in the top-right corner (where your name is). Select “My Account”, and then navigate to the “Memberships” section. Click on the trash can icon associated with the Channel you’d like to cancel. Your subscription will end at its monthly renewal date and you will not be charged any further.