Guides

Plain explanations of how video actually works: what compression trades away, why uploads fail, and what every platform will and will not accept.

• Video size and length limits for every platform

  Every platform enforces two limits, a size cap and a length cap, and most of them enforce a third one they never tell you about: the quality they will re-compress your video down to once it arrives. Here is what each one actually allows.

• Why your video will not upload, and how to fix it

  Upload errors are famously unhelpful: a red toast, a generic message, or a spinner that never finishes. Behind all of them there are only a handful of actual causes, and each one has a specific fix.

• MP4, MOV, MKV, WebM: which one should you use?

  Almost every piece of confusion about video formats comes from one mixed-up idea: people treat the file extension as if it describes the video. It does not. It describes the box the video came in.

• How to compress a video without ruining it

  Compression is a negotiation between size and detail, and most people lose it by pulling the wrong lever. Understanding what the encoder is actually doing makes the difference between a clean small file and a blocky one.

• Aspect ratios and safe zones, explained

  Getting the shape of the frame right is half of making a video look native to the platform it lands on. Getting the safe zone right is the other half, and almost nobody thinks about it until something important is hidden.