From the course: Getting the Most out of Video on Facebook

Which formats of video are well-suited for Facebook? - Facebook Tutorial

From the course: Getting the Most out of Video on Facebook

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Which formats of video are well-suited for Facebook?

- So you want to upload a video file to Facebook. Well, what type of video file? You see, in the world of digital video, there's a myriad of formats. Formats that cameras capture, formats that have been processed on a computer, formats that your phone makes and knowing which format to choose or what your options are is pretty important. When it comes to uploading video on Facebook, there are some recommended formats. Generally speaking, the H.264 codec, which is a modern codec, that's typically associated with the MPEG4 family is the most popular format. The audio is in the AAC format, which is a modern encoding method and typically, it's recommended that you upload either using the Apple MOV container format or the more broadly compatible and more universal MP4 format. Your video cannot be bigger than 4000px wide, which is really quite big. Most 4K video will still fit within this dimension so you should be able to upload and it needs to be divisible by 16px. Now, this may sound strange here but it just means that you get an even number. Just about every standard video format is. Where you're going to run into some bugs is if you're dealing with slide presentations perhaps or if you did some motion graphics and manually typed in a number. The frame rate needs to be at or below 30 frames per second so some of the high frame rate formats or the more professional broadcast formats need to be dumbed down a bit to 30 frames per second, 25 or 24. These are still plenty of frames for smooth motion but not as high as what all cameras capture. And the audio needs to be stereo with a sample rate of 44.1 kilohertz. Now, there are a myriad of formats to choose from. I'm not going to go through them all but it includes formats such as old 3gp formats that were captured by smart phones and even early generation cell phones, Windows Media formats like asf and avi, DIVX, old dv video which is ancient at this point, Flash Video, MPEG formats such as MPEG2s from DVD files. You'll find other options such as more modern open standards like the Ogg format or QuickTime formats and pretty much just about every format is supported on Facebook, but just because it's supported, doesn't mean it works well. Facebook really does mean that they want you to go with the H.264 codec, MPEG4 or MOVs. These are going to upload so much faster with much better visual quality, but if for some reason you have a digital video file in your archives from a past project or you're given it by a client or a business partner, no big deal. You should be able to upload it to Facebook. It might just take a little while before the file is ready to view.

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