The best export settings for TikTok, Reels, Shorts and YouTube

What each app publishes itself:

• YouTube recommends an MP4 with the index at the front (“fast start”), H.264 High profile, progressive, 4:2:0, variable bitrate, uploaded at the frame rate it was recorded at, with AAC-LC, Opus or Eclipsa audio at 48 kHz. Its bitrates are below.
• TikTok takes MP4 or WebM on the web, at least 720 × 1280, under 10 GB. Its spec for apps that post to TikTok recommends MP4 with H.264 (H.265, VP8 and VP9 also work), 23 to 60 fps, sides up to 4096 pixels and files up to 4 GB. For Creator Rewards, its additional reward asks for 1080p.
• Instagram asks for reels of at least 720 pixels and 30 fps. Its spec for apps that post reels is MP4 or MOV, H.264 or HEVC, 23 to 60 fps, at most 1920 pixels wide, variable bitrate up to 25 Mbps, AAC at up to 48 kHz and 128 kbps, up to 300 MB, and it recommends 9:16.

Check a finished file against all three apps with the free video size checker, and see every shape and margin in video sizes for TikTok, Reels and Shorts.

Resolution: 1080 × 1920 for anything vertical. It fills a phone screen, clears every app's minimum and is what TikTok's rewards ask for. A 4K vertical export is bigger and slower to upload, and the feeds show it on a phone anyway. For regular YouTube videos, export at the resolution you shot: 1920 × 1080, or 3840 × 2160 for 4K footage. Don't upscale 1080p footage to 4K in the export.

Frame rate: keep the one you recorded at. YouTube says so in as many words, and Instagram wants at least 30. Talking videos look the same at 30 as at 60, and 30 needs fewer bits; gameplay and sport look smoother at 60. Converting 30 to 60 adds nothing, and 60 to 30 is fine if you need a smaller file.

Codec: H.264 in an MP4 plays everywhere and is what YouTube and TikTok recommend. H.265 (HEVC) makes smaller files at the same quality and TikTok and Instagram take it, but H.264 is the safe default. Set the profile to High if your editor asks.

Bitrate: the bits spent on each second. Too low and the picture breaks into blocks on movement; past a point, more adds nothing, because every app re-encodes what you upload. Use variable bitrate (VBR) at about these, YouTube's recommended SDR bitrates:

A 1080 × 1920 vertical video has as many pixels as 1920 × 1080, so it takes the 1080p row. Work out any other combination, and the bitrate that fits a size limit, in the free video bitrate calculator.

Export AAC at 48 kHz, stereo. YouTube recommends 384 kbps for stereo; Instagram's API spec uses 128. Anything from 128 to 384 kbps is clear for speech and music, and audio is small next to the picture, so there's little reason to go low.

Loudness matters more than bitrate. TikTok, Instagram and YouTube don't publish a loudness target, but a clip much quieter than the ones around it gets swiped. Around −14 LUFS (the level Spotify evens music to), with true peaks under −1 dB so nothing distorts, is a sensible level for short videos. Measure and set it in the free video volume booster; why LUFS and not dB is in how to make a video louder.

File size is the total bitrate times the length, divided by 8 to turn bits into bytes: MB = (video Mbps + audio Mbps) × seconds ÷ 8. At the settings above, with 320 kbps audio:

Those all fit TikTok's and YouTube's limits easily, so don't squeeze a file before posting it: the app compresses it again, and you lose quality twice. Compress only to send a video somewhere with a small limit, like Discord or email; see how to compress a video and the free video compressor.

Step by step, with the vertical setup before it: vertical videos in Premiere Pro, in DaVinci Resolve and clips in CapCut.

Clyper's clips come out ready to post, so there are no settings to choose. Every clip is rendered as:

That's a higher quality than the apps keep, on purpose: they re-encode every upload, so the cleaner the file you give them, the better what they show. And each clip is already cut to its moment, framed on whoever's talking and captioned word by word.