Rags Tests Stuff: Facebook’s New Video Cover Feature

If there’s a new feature, it must be tinkered with. Today I found out how this one works.

Recently Facebook added the ability to use a video rather than an image for your business pages cover photo. I’d heard about the new feature being in development a while back, but only just discovered some time to look into the status and discover it has been launched. To be honest, I don’t login to Facebook anymore and I haven’t for years unless I need to edit my business page. I use HootSuite and manage most of my social media accounts from one dashboard.

Facebook provided the video specs as a size of 820 x 312 and a time of up to 90 seconds. I discovered the size was going to be a challenge right away, it may not be for you.

I am using a little program called Nikon View NX2 that came with a digital camera. Mainly because it’s something I already had, it is very easy to use and it suits my needs of just making simple and short video clips from time to time. I opened the program to see if I could designate the video size and struck out.

I took note of the closest size it offered from the menu and decided to take a swing with 854 x 480, as that is just slightly larger than the specs Facebook gave me. I created a short video using images at the 820 x 312 specs centered in the 854 x 480 format. Swing and a miss!

My video was cropped due to the height but the width nailed it. All I needed to do for the fix was justify my 820 x 312 images to the center top edge of the 854 x 480 frame and I was good to go. Strike two! For some reason it appears that the 312 pixel height should really be 324, as I had a 12 pixel gap below my video.

However, now that I have those specs I can make a template and enjoy this new feature Facebook has added. In terms of uploading, Facebook blended the feature in perfectly with the standard method of changing your cover photo. Simply login and go to your page, and now the camera button you’re used to using provides a drop down menu where you can select any of your videos to use as a cover.

As my video below demonstrates, my format is larger than the 820 x 312. However when used as my cover it is actually displaying just the top, centered 820 x 324 area.

Hopefully this little journey into the new feature provides you with some answers should you have been looking atthe feature yourself. Get creative and have fun with it!