Posting a Premiere Video on YouTube

Having a YouTube Premiere Video brings lots of benefits and views to your video.

Just what is a YouTube Premiere Video, and how do you load one up?

First, be sure to read our how-to write-up on how to make a video in the first place. That way you have the video complete and are prepared to share that video with your audience. This how-to is a very simple, basic one using your cellphone. No special software or editing needed.

Now that your video is recorded, it’s time to post it. Sure, you can simply just post it live on YouTube. But, instead, consider posting it as a premiere video. That gives you added benefit.

What is a Premiere Video?

The concept of a premiere video is that it “becomes visible” at a specific date and time. Think of it like an award ceremony. Lots of people tune in at 8pm EST at a specific date to see it at its very first showing. They want to all be part of that initial showing. After that, lots of people can re-watch it endlessly. So the video is available long term for those later viewers. It has all the same features as a ‘normal’ video. Its special bonus is that it had the premiere launch when it very first was shown to the public.

You pre-load your premiere video ahead of time. Let’s say a video was going to go live on May 1 at 8pm. I could post the video into the systems on April 28th so everything was set. I could schedule it for a release time of May 1 at 8pm EST. I now have a URL I can send out to everybody letting them know where that premiere is going to be held. That means I can get a lot of publicity for that URL. People going to the URL will see the count-down clock of how long until the video is visible.

This makes it easier for people to all get to the video for its launch.

A Premiere Video lets people chat and talk about the video while it’s playing that first time. It makes the event a community event. And then, after that first playing, the video is available for anybody to watch and rewatch.

In order to set up a premiere video, you need the video to be complete. So be sure to look at our other how-do that talks about how to make the video in the first place.

Posting a Premiere Video on YouTube

YOU CAN ONLY POST A YOUTUBE PREMIERE FROM YOUR COMPUTER. That’s it. I tried both the normal YouTube phone app as well as the specialized YouTube Studio phone app. Neither allow a premiere. I also checked the online documentation. So you must use your computer to load up a premiere.

You can still SHOOT your video on your cellphone. You then need to move the video onto your PC to actually load it onto YouTube, to be able to use the premiere option.

We’ll have separate instructions on how to get your video onto your computer, if you need help with that. There will also be separate instructions if you want to edit your video. This walkthrough is simply about how to get that video live into YouTube as a premiere.

On your computer, go to YouTube.com. Log into your YouTube account.

Once you’re logged in, you should see a video camera silhouette in the top right.

When you click that icon, you’ll get two options. Choose the Upload Video option.

You are now instructed to browse to find your video on your hard drive. Click to browse around. Figure out where you put your video, and click on it to select it.

Your video will start loading.

While the video is loading, you can set all the details for this video. You don’t have to wait.

For beginners, the only two things on this first tab are the title and description. Use a title full of key words people would search on. This is how people will find your video. At the same time, have it make sense as a title. Have your description be useful and descriptive.

Click Next.

You can skip this entire second tab. You can worry about that sort of thing later on. For now, skip it.

Click Next.

The third tab is where you set the scheduled launch date for your premiere. Note that once you save this you CANNOT CHANGE IT while it is loading. Loading can take a fair amount of time. A 20 minute video can take 25-30 minutes to load up. So give yourself some leeway in setting your premiere time. Don’t set it to be 15 minutes from now. Plan ahead.

I’ll note that after the loading stage comes the processing stage. If a video takes 30 minutes to load in, it can then take another 10 minutes to process before it’s available. You *can* edit the video values, including its premiere time, once it’s in the processing stage.

So again, to make this a premiere, choose the “schedule” radio button, put in a future time, and click the “Set as Premiere” button.

Then press SCHEDULE.

You’ll get a confirmation that everything is loading up. Leave this window open while the loading process goes through its stages. You can close the little white “Video Uploading” alert. Just be sure to leave that main browser window with YouTube open.

Visitors who go to your channel, or who get alerts from you with the destination URL, will see a special type of page that says the video is coming soon. They get a countdown once the time is within two minutes. All of this makes it easy to “congregate” people at the video all at the same time. If you look at the bottom of this video it says “Premieres in 60 seconds”.

Here is the 2 minute countdown window. It is all done automatically, with music. This starts when the premiere time is reached.

On the right hand side, people can chat and make comments while the premiere is playing. When this first premiere run is complete, the video is then available like all other videos on YouTube for repeat watching. When people watch the video later on, they’ll be able to see those special comments that were made on the very first premiere of the video.

Here is what it looks like while it is playing in premiere mode. Note that when you point at the video, while it’s playing it SAYS it is live. But it is NOT LIVE. It is pre-recorded.

So, to be clear, THIS IS NOT A LIVE VIDEO. This video was not broadcast live. The video was made at the artist’s leisure. The artist got to play with the video until it was just right. When the video was ready, the artist then loaded that video into YouTube as a Premiere video. That gives this special method of putting the video live, in a way which draws more interest and which people can “enjoy together”.

Interestingly, as you watch this in its first premiere playing, watchers have NO idea of how much longer the video is going to run. There is no “end time” shown. So it’s a good idea to let people know in the description or something so they know how long this is going to go.

Here is the video now that the premiere is over. It indicates when that premiere first happened. It also lets you “re-watch” the appearance of the premiere conversation on the right hand side, if you want. The comments appear in the window right at the time (during the video) that they were initially typed in. So they make sense in context. You can hide that conversation, too, if you’d rather just watch the video.

Ask with any questions!

As a note, there is video editing software created by Adobe called Adobe Premiere. That is wholly separate from the concept that YouTube and Facebook have of “launching a video as a premiere”. They just happen to be the same name.

Here’s how to do the same premiere style event on Facebook –

If you need help with just the very first basic steps of recording a cellphone video, here you go:

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