Back to blog
Video Formatting for Facebook: All of Your Questions Answered
Since it launched in 2004, Facebook has burgeoned into a social media colossus with approximately 2.27 billion users worldwide. If you’re seeing more video on your Facebook feed, it’s not by chance.
Facebook pivoted towards video back in 2015 as a response to how the medium was already gaining popularity among consumers of all ages and genders.
Ensuring that your videos are high quality and adapted to Facebook’s recommended guidelines makes it more likely that people watch your videos (depending on what time they are published) and, ultimately, turn into consumers. With its fusion of sounds, images and text, Facebook video is a great tool for promoting your brand and its products in a fun and engaging way.
To make sure your videos look their best every time you upload them, you should look for the most efficient ways to prepare and upload them. Start with a Facebook video maker, with ad templates. And keep reading to get all the answers to your Facebook video formatting questions.
Facebook currently supports 19 different types of video files:
As we note below, Facebook does have two video formats – MP4 and MOV – that it specifically endorses for its platform.
In spite of these guidelines, many people still use other popular video formats, such as AVI, WMV and Flash for their Facebook video content.
As Facebook itself recommends, you should be using MOV or MP4 files to get the best quality for your videos.
MOV and MP4 files are typically lightweight and can better retain their HD quality during uploading and compression processes.
For the best video performance on Facebook, make sure that your videos are 1280 pixels wide by 720 pixels tall.
Landscape videos should have an aspect ratio of 16:9, square videos should have an aspect ratio of 1:1, and vertical should have an aspect ratio of 4:5.
Take into account that most of your viewers are probably watching these videos on a mobile device, and that square and vertical work best for that channel.
The right video formatting for Facebook ads depends on the type of video ad that you’re planning on publishing.
Here are the best practices for formatting some of the most popular Facebook video ad options.
For the comprehensive list of all the different types of video ads you can run on Facebook, their technical specifications and their length limits, check out Facebook Business’ page on video requirements.
Facebook does reduce the quality of your videos to save storage space on their end, but there are steps you can take to keep your videos High Definition (HD):
Yes. There are plenty of online tools that enable you to easily convert just about any type of video file to MP4 or MOV. 123apps, Wondershare, HDconvert are just a sample of the many companies that offer free options for quickly converting files to Facebook’s two preferred formats.
