When using Sked Social to post your videos, it's important that they are formatted correctly. We have provided general guidance below about how best to format your videos.
Firstly, don't try and upload huge videos, everything is downscaled to a maximum width of 1080 pixels (height can be anything, square or not), so uploading ultra-HD videos (or videos with a very high bitrate) is pointless.
We transcode (reformat) the video after you upload it, so it will take a bit longer for you to upload a video file than it does for an image file. That lets you see a preview of what the video that we will upload will look like by clicking the video icon / thumbnail on the post.
Expect videos to take quite a while longer than photos to actually post at your scheduled time and date. This is because of their relative filesize when we upload it to Instagram.
How long or short can your videos be?
Minimum length
Videos for stories or profile/feed posts must be at least 3 seconds long. Sometimes it's good to have a little bit of buffer (say an extra 0.5 seconds) in case the change in format to Instagram's format adjusts the length.
Instagram profile/feed posts
Instagram limits videos to 60 seconds, so make sure your video is 60 seconds or less or it will be cropped automatically (see Instagram help document). They should be a minimum of 3 seconds.
Instagram story posts
Instagram Story videos must be between 3 and 15 seconds.
Detailed video specifications
Videos don't have to be to the below specification: however we recommend that if you're outputting video files specifically for the purpose, keep them close!
Composition Size / resolution
Maximum width 1080 pixels (height anything, although within the same ratios as images)
Frame Rate
29.96 frames per second (max 30fps, but should be fixed, not variable)
Codec and file format
H.264 codec / MP4
AAC audio codec at 44.1 kHz mono (up to 128kbps)
Bitrate
5,500 kbps video bitrate (although Instagram may reduce this to 3,500kbps when we post it) (up to 7,500kbps bitrate we will keep as-is, above that we will downgrade to 7,500 kbps).
File size
File size isn't specifically limited by Instagram, but we recommend keeping your videos under 30MB. Sked has a 150MB file size limit when you are uploading files, however this is for all files 'submitted' and individual file sizes may need to be smaller.
For reference, most 60 second videos uploaded to Sked at Instagram's resolution described above are around 25-30MB.