Recommended Video Size For Facebook, YouTube, and Other Social Media
Pulkit Jain
Videos are an integral part of an effective social media campaign. Thus, by adding videos, you increase the reach of your posts,enhance your search history, your audience understands your message better, and your posts get more clicks. However, as a video maker, it can be hard to keep track of the different video size specifications for different social networks (things like video format, aspect ratio, video sizes, duration, etc).
In this article, I’m going to list down the recommended video sizes for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube and Snapchat. We know that it is challenging to make videos in different sizes for all these platforms. With this purpose in mind, we will be mentioning a solution for the problem towards the end of this article. So, go ahead. Bookmark this article as a reference guide to create the best video sizes for every social media platform and an easy way to make videos in all these sizes.
RECOMENDED VIDEO SIZE FOR SOCIAL MEDIA
FACEBOOK
Since video consumption on Facebook is increasing steadily year by year, it will not be a surprise if Facebook is your brand’s go-to platform for video. There are different types of Facebook videos:
1. Native videos on Facebook
This is the most common type of Facebook video. However from a brand’s perspective, this is also a difficult way of getting a good organic reach, partly due to Facebook’s recent updates. Though this update is a mood-killer for marketers, it is still a viable way to share video. For instance: check out this square video on Facebook:
Video Guidelines
Recommended video size: 1280 x 720
Video orientation: Landscape, Square, Portrait
Accepted aspect ratios are 16:9 (for landscape), 1:1 (for square) and 9:16 (for portrait).
Mobile renders all videos to 2:3
Max file size: 4 GB
Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV
Max duration: 240 minutes
2. Native video ads
When you boost any of your videos by putting in money, they become native video ads. These videos are called native ads because they are in fashion like other uploaded videos and reside in your users’ feeds. Once played on the desktop, they stick at the right column as you scroll down.
Besides, you can also boost any of your existing uploaded videos and they will show up as native video ads to your selected audience.
Accepted aspect ratios are 16:9 (for landscape), 1:1 (for square) and 9:16 (for portrait).
Mobile renders all videos to 2:3
Max file size: 4 GB
Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV
Max duration: 240 minutes
3. Carousel video ads
Use Carousel video ads when you want to showcase upto 10 images or videos to your target audience. There is especially this extra space that you can use to highlight different products, to illustrate specific details about a single product and service, or tell a story about your brand that develops across each carousel card.
Facebook collections surely make it easier for users to discover, browse through search engines and purchase products or services directly from their mobile device. Why this works is because as of January 2018, 95% of active users accessed Facebook from their mobile phone.
A video collection typically includes a cover video followed by several images, hence making it perfect for displaying multiple products or multiple variations of a single product.
For instance: a Collection video ad
Video Guidelines
Recommended video size: 1200 x 628
Orientations: Landscape, Square
Accepted aspect ratio is 16:9 (for landscape) and 1:1 (for square)
Max file size: 4 GB
Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV
Max duration: 240 minutes
5. Facebook cover videos
Facebook cover videos are in like manner cover images – they occupy the space at the top of your Facebook Page. The video will automatically start playing in mute when a user visits the page. However, visitors have the option to unmute, or expand to play the uploaded video in fullscreen.
As an illustration: Cover video put up by Buffer on Facebook
Video Guidelines
Recommended video size: 820 x 462
Orientations: Landscape
Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV
Min duration: 20 seconds
Max duration: 90 seconds
INSTAGRAM
Above all, Instagram’s advertising revenue has increased significantly in the last year. Thus, understanding Instagram video ads and their impact is very important for an advertiser. That is, if you want to impress your boss by executing the perfect ad campaign on Instagram.
1. Instagram Stories
Stories was indeed a game changer for Instagram. They run in a full screen and in vertical format. With 60% of stories viewed with sound-on, be sure to share content that sounds as good as it looks, and use an Instagram story scheduler to auto-post your videos. Hence, selecting the perfect music track for your video is very important.
Video Guidelines
Recommended video size: 1080 x 1920
Video orientation: Portrait
Recommended aspect ratio is 9:16
Max file size: 4 GB
Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV
Max duration: 15 seconds
2. Native videos
You can post Instagram videos in either the landscape or the square format. However, square video size has an edge over landscape video size (of course you would want to make Square videos knowing that, right? BTW, Rocketium has over 300 ready-made square templates for Instagram!).
Since, square videos consume more real estate on the user’s screen, your viewer is not distracted by other posts and the metrics of your own video (views, likes, comments, etc). Thus, the only thing a user sees is the video and the CTA associated with it.
Video Guidelines
Recommended video size: 1080 x 1080
Orientations: Landscape, Square
Recommended aspect ratios are 16:9 (for landscape) and 1:1 (for square)
Max file size: 4 GB
Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV
Max duration: 60 seconds
3. Carousel video ads (again, but for Instagram this time)
These work analogous to Facebook video ads. Moreover, you can showcase up to 10 images or videos within a single ad, each with its own link.
Video Guidelines
Minimum number of cards: 2
Recommended video size: 1080 x 1080
Video orientations: Square
Accepted aspect ratio is 1:1
Max file size: 4 GB
Recommended video formats: MP4, MOV
Max duration: 60 seconds
TWITTER
As a digital marketer who is active on Twitter, it’s all about grabbing your users’ attention with enticing and click-worthy video content. For instance: In the sports and entertainment industry, Twitter is often the go-to for sharing video content.
Video orientations: Landscape, Square and Portrait
Accepted aspect ratios are 16:9 (for landscape), 1:1 (for square) and 9:16 (for portrait)
Max file size: 512 MB
Recommended video formats: MP4 for web, MOV for mobile
Max duration: 140 seconds
YOUTUBE
Not only youTube is the second-largest search engine after Google, but also the largest for videos. As a marketer, YouTube channel is the perfect space to promote, educate and share video content about your brand.
1. Native videos
YouTube allows users to upload different types of media formats and the freedom to use plenty of different dimensions. In fact, videos in smaller ratios tend to have black bars (known as pillarbox) to make them fit into the YouTube player without cropping your content.
An example of a native video on YouTube
Video Guidelines
Recommended video size: 426 x 240 (240p) to 3840 x 2160 (2160p)
Video orientations: Landscape
Accepted aspect ratio is 16:9 (for 4:3 ratios, pillarboxing is added automatically)
Max file size: 128 GB
Recommended video formats: MOV, MPEG4, MP4, AVI, WMV, FLV, 3GPP, and WebM
Max duration: 12 hours
2. Video ads
Google claims that brands advertising on YouTube channel often receive a 20% increase in traffic. Infact YouTube video ads are pretty straightforward and can be classified into skippable, non-skippable, mid-roll, and pre-roll video ads.
Although, these ads follow the same video size and specs, they differ in their maximum duration.
Skippable Video Ads:
These videos can be set to play before, during or after the original video content and users can skip it after 5 seconds. Generally, this ad format is the only one that allows advertisers to monetize the views from any viewing device (desktop, tablet, mobile, TV or a gaming console).
Non-Skippable Video Ads:
These videos can be set to play before, during or at the last of the original video content. However, users are forced to watch the full 15 seconds. But, views from TVs or gaming consoles do not count as monetizable views.
Mid-roll Video Ads:
These videos are played mid-view (like TV commercials) and are only available for original content that lasts longer than 10 minutes. They are added either automatically, based on YouTube’s algorithm, or manually.
Mid-rolls can be skippable, but users must watch at least 30 seconds of the video ad before they see the ‘Skip Ad’ option.
Pre-roll Video Ads:
These videos are played before the original video content. They’re small 6-second video ads that cannot be skipped, and are usually optimized for mobile views.
Video Guidelines
Recommended resolution: 426 x 240 (240p) to 3840 x 2160 (2160p)
Recommended Orientations: Landscape
Accepted aspect ratio is 16:9 (for 4:3 ratios, pillarboxing is added automatically)
Max file size: 128 GB
Recommended video formats: MOV, MPEG4, MP4, AVI, WMV, FLV, 3GPP, and WebM
Min duration of mid-roll video ads: 30 seconds
Max duration of
Skippable ads: 12 hours
Non-skippable ads: 15-30 seconds
Pre-roll video ads: 6 seconds
SNAPCHAT
Snapchat is an really active network for younger generations and is used heavily by Millenials to share video content. Therefore, the advertising opportunities on Snapchat are huge!
There are partner opportunities to put video within Snapchat’s discovery option, and the dimensions for which are the same. But you are required to reach out to them for more details on advertising. Snapchat users generally see these ads in between viewing other users’ Stories.
Which tool can help me make videos for all social media platforms?
We understand that it is a daunting task to create videos for every platform. In short, to make videos for different platforms video editors have to spend hours doing redundant tasks. This is where creative automation can help.
Pulkit Jain 
