If your videos are long, in 4K, or straight off a high bitrate camera, the files can get big quickly. Here are a few tips to keep uploads smooth and your storage healthy.
On a paid plan, buffering is already handled
On the Standard and Premium plans, any upload of about 50 MB or more is converted into adaptive quality versions automatically, and the player picks the one that suits each viewer's connection. So you don't need to shrink a file to stop your viewers buffering. The advice below is still worth following, because a smaller file uploads faster and takes up less of your storage, but the viewing experience is taken care of. On the Free plan, viewers receive the original file, so a sensible bitrate matters for them too. Read more in Adaptive quality playback for your videos.
Pick a sensible bitrate
For most online video, you don't need cinema bitrates. A few rough targets that look great on the web:
| Resolution | Suggested bitrate |
|---|---|
| 720p | 2.5 to 5 Mbps |
| 1080p | 5 to 10 Mbps |
| 1440p | 10 to 16 Mbps |
| 2160p (4K) | 20 to 35 Mbps |
Most editors let you export at a target bitrate. If you're using a tool like Handbrake, the Web Optimised preset is a great starting point. The Handbrake documentation has friendly explanations of the settings.
Trim what you don't need
Cut the silent bit at the start, the long pause at the end, the bloopers. Every second you trim is storage you keep.
What the upload does behind the scenes
Files of 100MB or more are uploaded in 100MB chunks. If a chunk fails, only that chunk is retried, not the whole file. That makes large uploads much more reliable on home internet.
If your laptop sleeps mid upload, the upload will pause and likely fail. Plug in, switch off sleep mode, and keep the tab visible until it's done.
What's the absolute maximum
Your single biggest file can be as large as your remaining storage. So on the Premium plan with 4TB free, you could upload a 4TB file in theory. In practice, anything above a few gigabytes is worth compressing first to reduce upload time and storage use.