This article is part of a series of tutorials we are developing for professional drone pilots
You just finished putting together your first video for a real estate agent. Now what? How do you deliver it? How do you ensure it's in a usable format? There's a very good chance your MLS has specific and strict requirements regarding video. Using a YouTube or Vimeo link may get the video removed or in some cases the agent fined. It's extremely rare that a MLS supports direct video uploads. So what do you do?
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You will often hear people on forums saying they deliver video just as a MP4 or MOV file and the agent got it on the MLS fine.
What often happens here is brokerages will give their agents tools that host the video for them.
So just because one agent in your area can handle MP4/MOV video doesn't mean they all can.
We have gained new customers who left other drone pilots due to them delivering video in this way. Don't be that guy.
At the heart of the issue is branding. Branding and contact information are not supposed to be in MLS listings. YouTube and Vimeo will show contact info or other videos containing branding after the main video plays. This has to be prevented. However, non MLS sites allow for branding and an agent will often want their contact info listed to generate leads. So how do you do both? There are a couple of ways to achieve this without spending any money. We can do it for you (for free), or you can do it yourself.
Both methods we are discussing utilize embedding techniques to remove branding. While this method has worked for every MLS we have tried it on, verify compatibility with your MLS.
To use our method you do the following (this functionality is free)...
Here is a youtube video showing you how it's done.
Some people prefer to host themselves. If you have access to edit your website and a decent understanding of HTML you should be able to do it. You will want to create 2 separate pages for each video. One page where you embed a video that has no branding on it. Another page where you have the video and the realtors contact info. Aside from ensuring the video itself has no contact info in it, you will need to alter the youtube embed parameters to remove a number of features. The exact embed code you use will depend on your website layout and MLS. You can read about the embedding parameters youtube provides here.
This article is part of a series of tutorials we are developing to help drone pilots servicing the real estate industry. If you like what you've read consider joining our Drone Pilot Network
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