Is it me or did Instagram disable the option to post videos that you can skip/fastforward/-backward through?
I started my Instagram (@LessTalkMoreDisco) specifically for my music when I just started making electronic music. Loved sharing snippets, jams, and full (rough) tracks over there. But if all playback options are being removed, I might go to YouTube or somewhere else.
I’m not really interested in IG as a platform for promoting myself via shorter snippets, I liked using it to archive mostly full jams/tracks. YouTube to me feels like a bigger barrier to post, where any rough cuts that I liked for some reason I was okay posting on Instagram for some reason.
Am I correct in that IG has disabled full video playback controls? How are you feeling about this?
Added: it seems that videos posted previously still show the playback time-bar.
[edit: Answered via online article: see link in post no. 19]
I don’t think so - last videos I’ve posted aren’t reels and the options are still seperate for me.
Did you ever have video controls in the feed? I know you do on desktop, but I always thought they were disabled on IG on mobile. How long ago are you talking? I could be going crazy.
If you can get over the world changing around you then Reels are actually great for reach - they get a lot of traction and the limitation is like a minute right? Probably as long as you can expect to hold someone’s attention on IG anyway.
Annoyingly posting Reels from Android seems to have a bug for a lot of people that causes the audio to be hugely downsampled - so it’s not an option for me right now, but it would be a preference if it was
Btw you mention you don’t watch reels, but the poster chooses whether they appear in the feed or not, so you probably do just without realising it - the Reels tab is just for reels, it’s not the only place they appear though.
My point (correct or not) is that I now only get the option to post videos as (long) reels.
I’m not really interested in just posting videos of less then a minute (wether people are interested or not).
Regarding how long ago: for me (IPhone) this is a very recent change. Like over the past few weeks. Before then I could still post long format videos (edit: with the playback time bar).
I can have a look at it with my laptop, maybe it’s possible there. But that still doesn’t really appeal to me.
Well you can’t even post Reels on desktop so you’ll struggle to post anything else
I’ve posted videos since then myself, and they appear to be categorised seperately still. Instagram do seem to have started using a consistent icon for videos though, is that perhaps part of the confusion?
Well are you posting them for you or other people?
Just cause it’s easier to explain, here’s two recent videos. You see at the most recent one the time-skip bar has gone (even though they’re both longer videos of a couple of minutes).
I’m not sure I remember even having the bar on videos - I must be going crazy. But I don’t have it on any of mine - however old. But I don’t think this is anything to do with Reels.
Ah I think i know why: you have to press / open a video post to get that bar. If you scroll past in the Home Screen or feed it isn’t there.
It’s all depending on how you use IG of course. And I’m really not their intended ideal customer I can believe: as you say, I’m more there for my own enjoyment of archiving long videos and some social contact; less about reaching more views. It’s obviously also a bigger burden for them to store long videos - whilst they’re being watched less.
It might still be me not seeing some option to select or something. But I thínk we’ll all be having this soon - maybe depending on updating the app and whichever operating system you’re on.
It looks different than Reels in that it’s a video of multiple minutes and that I posted it as “Post”, but still the video (see my printscreen) says “Reels” though…
