How to add your highlights from YouTube

Your highlights section holds two clips and one channel link. That is the whole budget, and it is deliberate: a recruiter opens your portfolio for about as long as it takes to decide whether to open it properly, and two clips is what fits in that window. Everything else lives behind the channel link.

This walks through it exactly as the product works, including the two places where a link can look saved and still not play for the person you sent it to.

Before you touch Athlete-X: two settings on YouTube

Your video is not uploaded to us. It stays on your YouTube channel and your portfolio plays it from there, which means YouTube’s settings decide what a coach sees. Two of them matter.

1. Visibility: Public or Unlisted. Never Private.

• Unlisted is the one to use if you would rather your channel not fill up with reels. Anyone who has the link can watch, and it does not appear in search, on your channel page, or in recommendations.
• Public works exactly as well. Use it if you want the video findable on YouTube too.
• Private does not work, and it fails silently. A private video cannot be played by anyone but the accounts you named on YouTube, and your portfolio cannot show its thumbnail either. The coach gets a blank frame or an error, not a “sign in” prompt. If you take one thing from this article: check that your video is not Private.

Set it in YouTube Studio → Content → the video → the Visibility column.

2. Embedding must stay allowed

Your portfolio plays the clip in place rather than sending anyone to YouTube. If embedding is turned off for the video, the frame loads and then reads “Video unavailable”.

In YouTube Studio, open the video → Show more at the bottom of the details page → Allow embedding. It is on by default, so you only need to look if a clip refuses to play.

Two related cases that turn embedding off for you, without asking:

• Age-restricted videos cannot be embedded at all. If YouTube age-restricts your clip, it will not play in a portfolio anywhere.
• A copyright claim on your music can restrict where the video plays. This is the most common one we see, because highlight reels get cut to music. The clip plays fine for you and shows “Video unavailable” for a recruiter in another country. If you want music, use a track from YouTube’s own Audio Library, which cannot be claimed.

Uploading so it looks right

The portfolio draws your clip in a 16:9 frame.

• Film and export landscape. A vertical clip or a Short still works and still plays, but it sits in the middle of the frame with black bars down both sides, which is a strange first impression on a page that is otherwise composed.
• Upload at 1080p if you can, 720p at minimum. The portfolio asks YouTube for the large thumbnail first and falls back to the small one when a video does not publish it. The small one is a lower-resolution 4:3 image, and it looks it.
• Set a custom thumbnail if your YouTube account is verified (YouTube Studio → the video → Thumbnail → upload). That image is what a coach sees before pressing play, so it is worth one frame of you in the middle of something. Without a custom thumbnail YouTube picks a frame for you, and it often picks a blurry one.

Nothing enforces a length. What we would say anyway: the first thirty seconds are the ones that get watched, so put your best play first rather than building to it.

Adding the link in your portfolio

1. Open your portfolio, then the Highlights section. If you have not added the section yet, it appears as a card you can add.
2. Copy the link to your video. The two forms that always work are the ones YouTube itself gives you:
   • the Share button under the video → https://youtu.be/AbCdEfGhIjK
   • the browser address bar on a video page → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbCdEfGhIjK
3. Paste it into Highlight 1. This is the clip you want watched first.
4. Look at the thumbnail. This is the whole verification step, and it is explained below.
5. Paste your second clip into Highlight 2 if you have one. It does not have to be a game reel: a short piece where you introduce yourself works well here, and it is often the thing that makes a recruiter reply.
6. Add your channel link underneath: a label (Hudl, YouTube, your name) and the URL. This is where everything that did not fit goes. It can be your YouTube channel, your Hudl profile, or any other platform.

Your portfolio saves as you go. There is no publish button to press.

The one trap: a link that saves but never plays

When you paste a link, we check that it points at YouTube. That is all the save checks. Reading the actual video out of the link happens separately, and it understands exactly four shapes:

Link	Works
youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEOID	Yes
youtu.be/VIDEOID	Yes
youtube.com/shorts/VIDEOID	Yes, but it will be pillarboxed
youtube.com/embed/VIDEOID	Yes

www., m. and music. in front are all fine, and anything after the video id is ignored, so a ?si=… tracking tag from the Share button or a &t=30 start time does no harm.

These, however, save without complaint and then never appear:

Link	Why it fails	What to do
youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=VIDEOID	The video id is not directly after watch?, so it is not found	Delete everything between watch? and v=
youtube.com/live/VIDEOID	Live permalinks are a different shape	Open the video normally and use the Share button
youtube.com/playlist?list=…	A playlist is not a video	Put it in the channel link field instead
youtube.com/@yourhandle	A channel is not a video	Put it in the channel link field instead

So verify with the thumbnail, not with the absence of an error. As soon as the link resolves, the box above the field fills with the frame from your video. If you still see the small film icon, the link did not resolve, and a coach will see nothing there no matter how correct the URL looks. The editor and the portfolio read the link the same way, so a thumbnail in the editor means a playable clip in the portfolio.

After it is in

• Do not delete and re-upload the video on YouTube. A re-upload gets a new id and your portfolio link goes dead. To fix a mistake, edit the existing video in YouTube Studio, or paste the new link into your portfolio afterwards.
• Edits on YouTube show up immediately. A new title, a new thumbnail, a trimmed ending: your portfolio plays whatever is on YouTube right now.
• Nothing about your video is copied to us. We store the link. You keep the video, the channel, the analytics and the right to take it down.

One privacy note, because parents ask: your portfolio does not load anything from YouTube until the visitor actually presses play, and when it does it uses YouTube’s no-cookie domain. A coach who opens your portfolio and reads it without watching has not touched YouTube at all.

When something looks wrong

What you see	What it is	Fix
Film icon in the editor, no thumbnail	The link shape was not understood	Use the Share button’s link, or the plain watch?v= one
Thumbnail in the editor, but nothing in the portfolio	The section was removed, or you are looking at an old share link	Re-open the Highlights section; check the link you actually sent
Grey box where the clip should be	The video is Private, or was deleted	Set it to Unlisted or Public in YouTube Studio
”Video unavailable” when pressing play	Embedding is off, the video is age-restricted, or a copyright claim blocks it in that country	Turn embedding back on; replace claimed music
Black bars down both sides	The clip is vertical or a Short	Re-export landscape if you can
Fuzzy still before play	The video is under 720p, or has no custom thumbnail	Re-upload at 1080p, add a custom thumbnail

The last check is worth thirty seconds: open your own share link on your phone, in a browser you are not signed into. That is exactly what the coach gets, and it is the only way to catch a Private video before they do.