Upload speeds are completely dependent upon two factors (both of which, unfortunately, we have no control over): file size and connection speed.
If you are having trouble uploading your video, let's run though this checklist:
1. Please make sure to always use Google Chrome as your browser
2. Please make sure your computer's power/sleep modes are turned off. If the computer automatically goes to sleep or shuts down during upload, this may kill the upload and you will have to start over.
3. "Plugging in" with an Ethernet cable can make the uploads faster and more reliable than uploading over a wi-fi network. The trouble you're experiencing may be wi-fi interference.
4. Plug your computer's power cord in so that it doesn't lose power during the upload.
5. Make sure that the video files on a camera, flash drive, hard drive, or DVD are copied to your desktop first. Cameras may turn off or lose power, or latency issues from drives can cause timeouts. Either of those instances will result in a failed upload.
6. Your upload bandwidth speed will affect how fast an upload happens. You can test this at Speedtest.net. You'll want upload speeds over 1 to 2 Mbps, but the higher the better. Most schools have well over this. Your home internet may be much slower than a school's network. Speedtest will give you three numbers; ping, download speed, and upload speed. Please let us know those numbers.
7. If you are uploading from a school, sometimes the school's firewall won’t allow uploads to work at all. Your IT department must whitelist *.s3.amazonaws.com and *.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com. Check out firewall information here.
8. Please check your computer firewall settings to make sure it isn't blocking vidswap.com. Temporarily turn it off and run a test upload. If the upload worked after temporarily disabling your firewall, please configure your firewall to allow communications with vidswap.com.
9. Your antivirus software may also be blocking the upload request in your browser. Please try updating those settings. Our uploader uses a technology called CORS and some types of virus software view that uploader as a threat. It is not. Temporarily turn it off and run a test upload. If the upload worked after temporarily disabling, please configure your virus software properly to allow VidSwap to run in the browser.
10. Once your upload starts, you don't want to navigate away from the upload page in that browser window; that will cut the upload off. You can open a new browser window to further navigate around the site, but you want to devote that first browser window to your upload until it finishes.
11. If you can't make your upload go faster, you can try making your files smaller... Steps to re-encode your video using Handbrake can be found here.
If you have tried all of the above suggestions and are still having trouble, please try using a different computer to upload your video. There could be something on your PC causing an issue.