YouTube supports a wide variety of upload formats. Most people upload their video without giving the format a moment’s thought. But since you are visiting this page perhaps you:
A. Want to make absolutely certain your upload format will work so you don’t waste you time or
B. You tried to upload video and it failed.
C. Maybe you are just the curious type.
In any case, here are the common video formats that YouTube accepts:
- Windows Standard Video Format: AVI – A very common output format – most often the video codec is MJPEG with PCM audio (the codec is the digital ‘wrapper’ that compresses the video when it’s saved and decompresses the video signal when it’s viewed – hence the word ‘codec’)
- MPEG Program Stream Formats such as: MPEGPS – Usually MPEG2 video codec with MP2 audio
- MPEG/Quicktime formats such as: MPEG4, 3GPP and MOV files – This includes h264, mpeg4 video codecs, and AAC audio codec (these are all common options with the prior 3 formats)
- Windows Media Formats such as: WMV
- Flash based formats such as: FLV – Adobe-FLV1 video codec, MP3 audio – Note that audio and video must be sent together. YouTube will not accept an audio only upload
- Open Video Formats such as: WebM files – Vp8 video codec and Vorbis Audio codecs
Here are a few more tips to keep in mind:
- Upload the video at its native frame rate (i.e. whatever it was recorded in – for example keep 30fps as 30fps if that’s how it was recorded. Don’t switch it to 24fps.)
- Upload your videos in their original resolution.
- If you are able – output your footage as “de-interlaced”. If this is too technical or you aren’t sure how to do this, don’t worry about it. YouTube will automatically de-interlace your footage – the processing might just take slightly longer.
YouTube DOES NOT ACCEPT:
- Software Project files: For example raw Premiere, Final Cut Pro or iMovie files. Export your video to one of the upload formats above.
- MSWMM: This is a Microsoft Windows Movie Maker file. Convert it to a .WMV file before you upload.
- WLMP: This is a Windows Live Movie Maker File. As above, convert this to a .WMV file first.
- Files upload directly from a DVD: ( for example, .IFO, .WOB, etc.). Use a program such as the freely available MPEG Streamclip to convert your video to one of the above formats.
- Audio formats such as: MP3, WAV and others. Combine your audio with a still photo or video image and output as a video file, not audio.
- Image files such as: JPG, PNG or PSD files. Output these files as video slideshows before uploading. , etc.) and Image files (JPG, PNG, etc.): Convert these files to video slideshows.
I hope you found this helpful. If you have any trouble feel free to email me here and I’ll do my best to help you out.