If you need one answer: export a 1080×1920 (9:16) MP4 with H.264 video and AAC audio for short-form placements, and a 1920×1080 (16:9) MP4 for landscape and long-form YouTube. That pairing covers most of what a campaign publishes across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, LinkedIn, X and Pinterest. The details below, by platform, are what separate a clean delivery from a rejected upload or a face cropped by an interface button.
TL;DR
- Short-form (Reels, TikTok, Shorts, Stories, Snapchat): 1080×1920, 9:16, MP4, H.264, AAC audio.
- Landscape and YouTube long-form: 1920×1080, 16:9. YouTube also accepts 4K (3840×2160) for high-quality assets.
- Feed placements often prefer 4:5 (1080×1350 organic, 1440×1800 in some ad guidance), so compose with a crop in mind.
- Keep faces, product and captions inside the central safe area, away from right-side buttons and bottom captions.
- Platforms change limits often. Confirm lengths, file sizes and ad rules on each platform's own help page before delivery.
Table of Contents
- The master export settings that work almost everywhere
- Social video specs at a glance
- Instagram and Facebook
- TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Snapchat
- YouTube long-form, LinkedIn, X and Pinterest
- Safe zones: where the interface eats your picture
- One master or separate exports?
- Audio and loudness
- A pre-publish checklist
- Our perspective
- Need the specs handled before the shoot?
- FAQ
- Sources
The master export settings that work almost everywhere
Before platform quirks, settle the baseline. Sprout Social's 2026 specs guide describes the standard recommendation as an MP4 container, H.264 video and AAC audio, with 1080×1920 for mobile-first video and 1920×1080 for landscape. That is the same recipe it gives for Reels, TikTok and Shorts as of October 2026.
A workable baseline for a delivery spec sheet:
- Container: MP4 (MOV is accepted by many placements, but MP4 is the safest default).
- Video codec: H.264. Renderforest advises sticking with the proven H.264 MP4 combination rather than experimenting, because it gives near-universal compatibility.
- Audio: AAC at 128 kbps or higher. Superscale's Meta ad sizes sheet lists MP4 or MOV, H.264, AAC at 128 kbps or higher, and 30 fps as the widely used standard.
- Frame rate: 30 fps keeps behavior consistent. If you shot at 24 fps for a cinematic feel, test it on the target placement before locking the delivery.
- Captions: burn in open captions for silent autoplay feeds, and supply sidecar files where the placement allows them. LinkedIn video ads, for example, are reported to accept SRT files only for captions, per one social planner's guidelines.
Treat every number in this article as the recommended target rather than a guarantee. Platforms revise limits, and the University of Cambridge's technical guidance for video makes the same point in its own context: check current guidance before publishing.
Social video specs at a glance
The table below pulls the recommended frame for each placement from the research we trust most for the 2026 figures. Length and file-size caps are intentionally left to the platform help pages, since they move more than aspect ratios do.
| Platform and placement | Recommended frame | Aspect ratio | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instagram Reels and Stories | 1080×1920 | 9:16 | Carousel videos support 1:1, 4:5 or 3:4 |
| Facebook Reels and Stories | 1080×1920 | 9:16 | Feed video ads: 1440×1800 at 4:5 in one guide |
| Facebook Feed (organic) | 1080×1350 | 4:5 | 1:1 also supported |
| TikTok | 1080×1920 | 9:16 | Mind the right-side controls |
| YouTube Shorts | 1080×1920 | 9:16 | Minimum 720×1280 is allowed |
| YouTube long-form | 1920×1080 | 16:9 | 4K (3840×2160) supported |
| Snapchat | 1080×1920 | 9:16 | Same vertical frame |
| Landscape or vertical | 1:2.4 to 2.4:1 | Very wide range of ratios | |
| X | 16:9, 9:16 or 1:1 | Varies | Pick by feed behavior |
| 1:1, 2:3, 4:5 or 9:16 | Varies | Vertical tends to fit the feed |
Sources for the table: ratios and resolutions for Instagram, TikTok, Shorts, Snapchat, LinkedIn, X and Pinterest come from Sprout Social; the Facebook Feed organic figure from Superscale; the 4K YouTube support from Repostit.
Instagram and Facebook
Meta's two apps now share most of their vertical logic, so it makes sense to plan them together.
Reels and Stories are recommended at 1080×1920 in 9:16, and carousel videos support 1:1, 4:5 or 3:4, according to Sprout Social. The same guide says Reels can run up to 20 minutes in-app, or 15 minutes through the API or a scheduling tool, and that Instagram does not recommend Reels over three minutes to new audiences. That last point matters for planning: a longer cut may be allowed, but it is not what the platform pushes to people who do not follow you yet.
A practical consequence: if your hero spot is a 4:5 feed piece, do not simply letterbox it into 9:16. Re-frame it. A vertical shot with the subject centered will get cropped when the profile grid shows a different crop than the Reels tab, so keep the key action in the middle third of the frame.
Facebook Reels and Stories keep the 9:16, 1080×1920 standard, and Superscale's 2026 sheet puts Feed video at 1080×1350 in 4:5, with 1:1 also supported. For video ads, Sprout Social cites 1440×1800 at 4:5. Both figures describe the same shape, so a 4:5 master composed to survive either size is the safe route.
One structural change to know: according to Crowbert, Meta unified Facebook video in June 2025, and most new video uploads are now published as Reels, which do not carry the strict length limits of older formats. If you built your delivery matrix around separate "feed video" and "Reels" rules, revisit it.
TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Snapchat
The three share the same recommended frame: 1080×1920 at 9:16, per Sprout Social. The differences are in length and the interface sitting on top of your picture.
TikTok supports organic uploads up to 60 minutes, while videos recorded in the app are limited to 10 minutes, per the same source. Few brand campaigns need either extreme. The more common failure is a layout problem, which we cover in the safe-zone section below.
For Shorts, a lower resolution is accepted (the floor cited is 720×1280), but 1080p is the right target so the picture stays sharp after the platform recompresses it. If your paid plan includes Shorts, the argument for vertical creative is laid out in this look at vertical video ads, which is worth reading before you decide whether a campaign needs a native vertical cut or a reframed landscape one.
YouTube long-form, LinkedIn, X and Pinterest
YouTube long-form
Standard is 1920×1080 at 16:9. According to Repostit, 4K (3840×2160) uploads are supported for high-quality assets. If a spot will also run on connected TV, the delivery requirements are a different discipline entirely: see our guide on mezzanine files and OTT validation.
LinkedIn is the most forgiving on ratio, supporting a range from 1:2.4 to 2.4:1 according to Sprout Social. That flexibility is a trap: just because a very tall or very wide file is accepted does not mean it looks good in a feed. For ad placements, size and file rules are broken out in this LinkedIn ad sizes cheat sheet, a handy cross-check when the media plan includes sponsored video.
X and Pinterest
X supports 16:9, 9:16 or 1:1. Pinterest supports 1:1, 2:3, 4:5 or 9:16 (both per Sprout Social). In practice, a 4:5 or 9:16 export serves Pinterest, and a 1:1 or 16:9 export serves X. If the campaign budget is thin on these two, a single reframed version of the main cut is usually enough.
Safe zones: where the interface eats your picture
Specs tell you the canvas. Safe zones tell you how much of it the viewer actually sees. The most common production error in 2026 is ignoring them, with critical visual information hidden behind engagement buttons or caption rails, as Quso's 2026 quick reference puts it.
For TikTok, Ghostshorts advises keeping essential content in the roughly 920×1330 center area of the 1080×1920 frame, away from right-side controls and bottom captions. That leaves an unused band at the top, the bottom and, most importantly, the right edge.
How to build this into production rather than fixing it in the edit:
- Put a safe-zone overlay in the camera monitor or editing timeline. Build one template that is the union of the most restrictive placements.
- Frame for 9:16 first when vertical is the priority, then check the 4:5 and 1:1 crops. It is far easier to crop out of a vertical frame composed with margins than to rescue a landscape one.
- Place supers, logos and legal text inside the central zone. Logos in the lower right corner are the first casualty.
- Position captions above the bottom UI band, not along the bottom edge.
- Review on a phone, inside the actual app, before approval. A screen recording from a draft post is enough.
Captions deserve a planning decision, not an afterthought. If you are choosing between burned-in, sidecar and platform auto-captions, our brief-stage checklist on accessibility in video ads walks through it, and this note on optimizing video for search covers why captions and transcripts help discoverability as well.
One master or separate exports?
It is tempting to ship a single file everywhere. Superscale's guidance is that while many platforms accept various ratios, one master file often leads to sub-optimal performance or automatic cropping, and it recommends platform-specific exports or at least composition tuned to each placement's ratio.
The middle path is the one most agencies land on:
- Shoot for the widest set of crops. Frame with generous margins so 9:16, 4:5, 1:1 and 16:9 can all be cut from the same coverage.
- Build a clean master first. Edit at the highest quality, with captions and supers on separate layers, then downconvert for each platform rather than re-encoding from an already compressed file. One aggregator guide recommends rendering a 9:16 1080×1920 master and downconverting, which works when vertical is the lead format.
- Re-edit the opening seconds per placement. The hook for a feed is not the hook for Stories, and a landscape title card does not belong in a vertical cut.
- Name files by placement and ratio, for example
Brand_Spot_15s_9x16_1080x1920_v03.mp4, so traffic teams do not guess.
This approach is the foundation of what we describe in dynamic video creative: planning the shoot so a single day produces dozens of usable assets. When the same campaign has to run in several markets, the same discipline applies to text and audio layers, as in our piece on campaign localization masters.
Audio and loudness
Social audio specs are looser than broadcast, but sloppy audio is the fastest way to look cheap. Use AAC at 128 kbps or higher, per Superscale. Many production guides also suggest stereo at 48 kHz and a master loudness around -14 LUFS, though that figure comes from a technical skills file rather than a platform's own statement, so treat it as a sensible starting point and confirm against the platform's current audio guidance. For delivery to broadcast or streaming, the targets are stricter: our rundown of audio mix standards covers them.
Keep in mind that most social viewing starts muted. Design the first three seconds to work without sound, then let the mix reward the viewer who turns it on.
A pre-publish checklist
Run this before anything leaves the building:
- Resolution and ratio match the placement (1080×1920, 1080×1350, 1920×1080).
- Codec and container: H.264, AAC, MP4.
- Frame rate is consistent with the platform's preference, usually 30 fps.
- Safe zones: no logo, face, price or legal line under the interface.
- Captions are legible, correctly timed and inside the safe area.
- Length is inside the current platform limit and the length the platform actually promotes. Check the platform's help page rather than a three-month-old blog post.
- Upscaling: if any asset began at a lower resolution, such as AI-generated footage, upscale it yourself before final export instead of trusting the platform to do it well.
- File name and version are unambiguous.
- A phone test inside the real app.
If a brief is vague on any of these, the problem started upstream. Our video creative brief template puts the deliverables matrix where it belongs: at the start.
Our perspective
Specs are not the hard part. Anyone can read a table. The hard part is making a spot that still feels cinematic when it is cropped to 4:5, covered by a button on the right and watched on mute in a feed.
We treat every project as a high-end production regardless of budget, and that shapes how we handle specs. We decide the deliverables matrix before the shoot, not after the edit. We frame for the tightest crop, light for the biggest screen, and keep captions and supers on their own layers so each placement gets a considered version rather than a stretched one. That is how a campaign scales across platforms without the agency adding headcount to chase versions.
Our rule of thumb: the number of exports should be a creative decision, not an accident. Two or three deliberate cuts beat ten automatic crops every time.
— Steven Reina
Need the specs handled before the shoot?
If your agency is planning a campaign that has to land on Reels, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn alike, we build the deliverables matrix into the production plan, from concept through final delivery, and work alongside your creative team rather than around it. See our full range of production, strategy and design services, or get to know the company.
We do not publish prices, because every engagement is scoped to the campaign. Tell us what you need to deliver and where it runs.
FAQ
What is the best video size for social media in 2026?
The most useful single frame is 1080×1920 at 9:16, because it publishes natively to Reels, TikTok, Shorts, Stories and Snapchat. For landscape and YouTube long-form, use 1920×1080 at 16:9. Feed placements often favor 4:5, so compose with that crop in mind.
What video format and codec should I export?
MP4 with H.264 video and AAC audio is the standard recommendation across platforms. AAC at 128 kbps or higher and 30 fps are the widely used settings. Sticking with this combination avoids most compatibility problems.
What are the recommended Instagram and Facebook video specs?
Reels and Stories on both are recommended at 1080×1920 in 9:16. Facebook Feed video is listed at 1080×1350 in 4:5, with 1:1 also supported, while Facebook video ads are cited at 1440×1800 in 4:5. Always confirm ad specs in the platform's ad manager before delivery.
Can I use one master video for every platform?
You can start from one master, but not publish one file everywhere. Render a high-quality master with captions and graphics on separate layers, then create placement-specific exports or reframes. Single files tend to be auto-cropped or underperform.
What is a safe zone in social video?
It is the central part of the frame that stays clear of platform buttons, captions and profile information. On TikTok, guidance points to roughly 920×1330 inside the 1080×1920 frame. Keep faces, products, logos and captions inside it.
Sources
- The Ultimate 2026 Social Media Video Specs Guide, Sprout Social
- Meta ad sizes 2026, Superscale
- Facebook Video Format, Size and Upload Limits, Crowbert
- Daily Video Upload Limit, Repostit
- TikTok Video Specs and Dimensions, Renderforest
- TikTok Video Dimensions and Sizes cheat sheet, Ghostshorts
- 2026 Social Media Video Specs quick reference, Quso
- Social Posting Guidelines, GoHighLevel
- Technical guidance for video content, University of Cambridge