Instagram video size

Most video on Instagram now plays full screen on a phone held upright. Reels and Stories share that 9:16 frame, and Meta’s publishing documentation recommends 9:16 for both: at 1,080 pixels wide, that is 1,920 pixels tall. Video posted to the main feed goes up as a reel, so it follows the reel figures. The exception is a video inside a carousel, which has to take the shape of the post around it.

Whether a reel also appears in the main feed is a posting choice, not something in the file. Through Meta’s API the option is called share_to_feed, and with it on, a reel can show in both the Feed and the Reels tab.

Instagram will take a 16:9 clip as a reel, but it won’t fill the screen: it plays as a strip across the middle, or it is enlarged and loses its sides. Cropping it to 9:16 yourself lets you decide what stays in the frame. How sharp the result looks depends on how much picture the source has to spare.

A vertical slice of 1080p footage keeps less than a third of its width. When a shoot is meant for Instagram, film upright, or film landscape in 4K with the subject near the middle, so a 9:16 crop can be cut later without losing detail.

Tip: Reframing a whole edit? Set the project to 1080 × 1920 and move each landscape clip inside it shot by shot, so a speaker who walks across the room stays in view.

Posting from your phone is forgiving, because the app converts whatever you choose. Scheduling tools post through Meta’s Content Publishing API instead, and its reference lists exact requirements for reels and Story videos. These are the settings to check in your editor’s export window.

Two lines in that list need translating. The moov atom is the file’s index, and moving it to the front is called fast start in many encoders, Web Optimized in HandBrake and -movflags +faststart in ffmpeg. Edit lists tend to appear when a clip is cut without being re-encoded, so trim in your editor and export a fresh file.

Instagram’s help centre names 30 frames per second as the minimum for reels, while Meta’s API accepts anything from 23 to 60. Footage shot at 24 fps for a film look falls between the two: inside the API’s range, under the help centre’s floor. If Instagram is where a video will live, film at 30 or 60.

More resolution helps only up to a point. The API’s 1,920-pixel limit on width means a 2160 × 3840 clip from a phone filming vertical 4K has to be scaled down before a scheduler can post it, and the app re-encodes every upload anyway. 4K earns its place when you plan to crop or zoom in the edit.

• An iPhone set to record in High Efficiency saves HEVC video, which Meta’s API accepts, so a clip doesn’t need converting because of its codec alone.
• Screen recordings usually have a variable frame rate. Re-export them at a constant rate if they will run as Reels ads, where Meta asks for a fixed one.
• Cameras that record 10-bit 4:2:2 produce files outside the API’s 4:2:0 requirement, so export a 4:2:0 copy for posting.
• Interlaced footage, marked with an i as in 1080i, needs deinterlacing first, because Meta asks for progressive scan.

• Exporting a 1920 × 1080 timeline for Reels and letting Instagram fit it, which leaves a thin band of picture in a tall screen.
• Uploading a video saved from another app. It has been compressed once already, and Instagram compresses it again.
• Leaving “Upload at highest quality” switched off. Instagram’s help centre describes the setting for reels and notes it can make uploads take longer.
• Handing a scheduler a file over 300 MB, or one wider than 1,920 pixels, both outside the limits in Meta’s API.
• Burning subtitles into the very bottom of the frame, where the caption, your username and the buttons sit.