How to video your home

Watch this short guide and read our tips on how to video your home for us to process.

Before you start, make sure the lighting is good. Take the video in the daytime, open the curtains and the blinds, and even then turn on all the lights you can.  Make sure all the doors to the rooms you are going to walk into are open, so you don’t have to stop and open them while taking the video. 

1. When you’re ready to start, open the camera app on your phone and switch to video mode by swiping sideways.

2. Hold the phone sideways, so you can take the video in ‘landscape’ orientation.

3. ‘Pinch’ the screen to zoom all the way out. You will see the numbers in the zoom indicator on the right change to 0.5 - this means you’re the most zoomed out you can be.

4. Press the red video record button to start filming and begin to slowly and continuously walk around your home. 

5. Always try to move forward slowly and steadily, even when turning around. Rather than turn around in one spot, turn while moving forward, like you’re driving a car. 

6. Walk around the entire home twice, with the video recording the whole time, going into every room and walking slowly around it before leaving again. 

7. If on your first visit to a room you walked around clockwise, on the second time in the room try walking anti clockwise. If on your first visit the camera was more pointed downwards, and you couldn’t see the ceiling at all, try aiming it a bit more upwards so you see the tops of the walls. Generally though you are not aiming the camera at the ground or at the ceiling, but forward. 

8. When you’ve walked around the whole house twice, and have come back to your starting point again, press the button to stop recording.

9. Press the photo thumbnail in the corner to switch from the camera app to your pictures app, where you can watch the video back to make sure it worked. 

10. Open your Preview Studio confirmation email on your phone and then follow the link send us the video. Video files are pretty large, so sending could take some time. Connecting to Wifi will usually give you the best upload speed. If you are having trouble because your phone is turning off mid-upload, you can temporarily disable the auto-lock in your phone while uploading.