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Specs for Social Media Videos: A Guide

15/07/2019
admin@michigancreative
Specs for Social Media Videos

At Michigan Creative, a lot of our videos end up being placed on websites and released onto social media. Here’s an up to date guide on what you need to know about posting videos on Facebook and Instagram. 

Facebook         

Posting onto Facebook, not embedding. We always recommend that when you post a video on social media, you upload the video directly to the platform, and not embed it from anywhere else. The viewer is more likely to click the video and watch it right there, rather than being directed to another link in order to watch it. 

Making a video your cover photo. This is now an option on Facebook, the video just has to be :90 or under, and the recommended size is 820 x 462 pixels. 

Here are some more specific specs that I found on sproutsocial.

  • Recommended video dimensions is 1280 x 720 for Landscape and Portrait.
  • Minimum width is 600 pixels (length depends on aspect ratio) for Landscape and Portrait.
  • Landscape aspect ratio is 16:9.
  • Portrait aspect ratio is 9:16 (if video includes link, aspect ratio is 16:9).
  • Mobile renders both video types to aspect ratio 2:3.
  • Max file size is 4GB.
  • Recommended video formats are .MP4 and .MOV.
  • Video length max is 120 minutes.
  • Video max frames 30fps.

Instagram

There are different spots that you can post videos on instagram which are as a post, as a story, and on IGTV, or on instagram live. 

As a post. The maximum length your video can be as a post is :60. If you do want to post a longer video, what you can do is break the video apart into different layers within one post. 

IGTV. This is somewhat new, and is a really great spot on Instagram to focus on just videos. This is a good spot to post longer videos. Videos must be between 15 seconds and 10 minutes long. 

Here is a great blog on Animoto that dives deeper into posting videos on Instagram. 

Something that I recommend for any video that you create, is to have a call-to-action on every video! If someone stops scrolling and watches your video, you want them to take action from doing so. 

Follow us on Facebook and Instagram @michigancreative, to check out what we’ve been up to lately!