A Guide to Social Media Videos and Photos Specifications (2019)

It’s crazy to think how quickly social media has grown over the years and how predominate it has become in our everyday lives. We’ll spend hours casually scrolling through social media platforms and interacting with individual content for a few seconds that took social media managers and brands careful planning and time to put together to produce content in the form of short videos or photo carousels.

As social media marketing continues to grow, it’s important to stay up to date on photo and video sizing specifications to make navigating through all of your social media platforms a breeze.  Luckily, we’ve gathered all of the essential information and created a guide to help you master photo and video content specific to each social media platform. We’ve also included some quick and easy tips to improve your content development on each platform.


Instagram

Facebook

Pinterest

LinkedIn

Twitter

Youtube



Instagram

Instagram Image Sizing and Aspect Ratios

  • Minimum resolution for profile photo: 320 x 320 px, 1:1 aspect ratio
  • Minimum resolution for square images: 1080 x 1080 px, 1:1 aspect ratio
  • Minimum resolution for portrait image: 1080 x 1350 px, 4:5 aspect ratio
  • Minimum resolution for landscape images: 1200 x 628 px, 1.9:1 aspect ratio
  • Minimum resolution for IG stories: 1080 x 1920 px, 9:16 aspect ratio

    • Minimum resolution: 600 x 1067 px

    • Accepted Video Formats: .MP4 and .MOV

    • Max file size for all photo and video formats: 4GB

Instagram displays thumbnail photos in your feed at 161 x 161 px. For photo uploads, Instagram will scale down photos to 612 x 612 pixels and photos will appear in follower feed at 510 x 510 pixels.

Instagram Video Sizing

  • Minimum resolution for landscape video: 600 x 315 px
  • Minimum resolution for square video: 600 x 600 px
  • Minimum resolution for portrait video: 600 x 750 px
  • Accepted video formats: .MP4 and .MOV
    • Maximum video length is 60 seconds

IGTV Video Sizing

  • IGTV video length: between 15 seconds and 10 minutes
    • Accepted video formats: .MP4
  • IGTV videos must be uploaded in a 9:16 aspect ratio (vertical)
  • Minimum frame rate: 30 FPS
  • Minimum resolution: 720 px
  • Maximum file size for videos 10 minutes or less: 650MB
  • Maximum file size for videos up to 60 minutes: 3.6GB
  • Recommended size for cover photos: 420px x 654px, 1:1.55 aspect ratio

Facebook

Facebook Image Sizing

  • Minimum resolution for profile photo: 180 x 180 px
    • Profile photos appear 170 x 170 px
    • Thumbnail on post is 32 x 32 px
  • Minimum resolution for cover photo: 450 x 150 px
    • Cover photos appear 820 x 312 px
    • Maximum file size 100 KB
    • Accepted file formats JPEG and PNG
  • Recommended shared image size 1200 x 630 px
    • Shared images appear 470 px wide on feed and 504 px on page
  • Recommended shared link size 1200 x 628 px
    • Square photos appear 154 x 154 px in feed and 116 x 116 px on page
    • Portrait photos appear 470 x 246 px in feed and 484 x 252 px on page
  • Recommended highlighted image size 1200 x 717 px
    • Highlighted images appears 843 x 504 px
    • The higher the resolution of the photo the higher the quality of the photo once it’s been scaled down by Facebook
  • Recommended event image size 1920 x 1080 px
    • Image will be scaled down to 470 x 174 px and will show in feed at the same specifications

Facebook Video Sizing

  • Recommended resolution for videos in feed: 1280 x 720 px
    • Minimum resolutions 600 x 315 px (landscape) and 600 x 600 px (square)

Did you know square videos are prime real estate for mobile users? They take up more screen space on user feeds, and over 95% of users were using a mobile device to access their facebook in 2018. Optimize the use of facebook videos by using square video recommended resolutions and aspect ratios for video content.

  • Recommended aspect ratios for videos:
    • 16:9 (landscape)
    • 9:16 (full portrait)
    • 2:3 (vertical)
    • 4:5 (vertical)
    • 1:1 (square)
  • Accepted video formats: .MP4 and .MOV
    • Maximum video length 240 minutes
    • Maximum file size 4GM
    • Maximum frame rate: 30 fps

Pinterest

  • Minimum resolution for profile photo: 180 x 180 px
    • Profile image is displayed 240 x 240 px
    • Maximum file size 10 MB
  • Minimum resolution for square pins: 600 x 600 px, 1:1 aspect ratio
  • Minimum resolution for optimal pins: 600 x 900 px, 2:3 aspect ratio
  • Minimum resolution for tall pins: 735 x 1102 px, 1:2.1 aspect ratio
  • Minimum resolution for board cover: 600 x 600 px
  • Large board images are displayed: 222 x 150 px
  • Small board images are displayed: 50 x 50 px
  • Pins on main page will appear 236 px wide and height is automatically scaled

Pin images can be posted at larger resolutions, as long as you maintain recommended proportions pinterest will be able to maintain visual quality of your pins.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn Personal Page Photo Sizing

  • Recommended resolution for profile image: 400 x 400 px
    • Maximum file size 10 MB
    • Accepted file formats JPEG, PNG and GIF
  • Recommended background cover photo: 1584 x 396 px

LinkedIn Business Page Photo Sizing

  • Recommended resolution for logo or profile image: 300 x 300 px
  • Recommended resolution for company cover photo: 1536 x 768 px
    • Maximum size 4 MB
    • Appears as 1400 x 425 px
    • Accepted file formats: JPEG, PNG, GIF
  • Recommend resolution for hero image size: 1128 x 376 px, aspect ratio 3:1

The hero image is the largest photo displayed on a LinkedIn business page. Optimizing this photo with strong imagery is a great way to optimize the platform to build your brand and portray employer culture, open job listings, and professionally network, especially for B2B traffic and discovery.

  • Recommended resolution for business banner image: 646 x 220 px
    • Maximum size 2 MB
    • Landscape orientation only
    • Accepted file formats: JPEG, PNG, GIF

LinkedIn Video Sizing

  • Required resolution range:
    • 256 x 144 px, aspect ratio 1:2.4
    • 4096 x 2304 px, aspect ratio 2.4:1
  • Recommended resolution for videos: 1920 x 1080 px
  • Video orientation: horizontal or vertical, videos are adjusted to display square in feed
  • Maximum file size: 5 GB
  • Maximum video length: 10 minutes
  • Frame rates: 10- 60 fps

Twitter

  • Recommended resolution for cover photo: 1500 x 500 px
    • Max file size 10 MB
  • Recommended resolution for profile photo: 400 x 400 px
    • Max file size 2 MB
  • Maximum resolution for in-stream photo: 1024 x 512 px
    • Maximum In-Stream photo size is 5 MB
    • Maximum GIF In-Stream is 3 MB
    • Supported File Formats: JPEG, PNG, GIF

Twitter photos in-stream appear collapsed at 506 x 253 px. The best way to get the most out of your post is to use engaging photos that tell their own stories accompanied by a short and sweet informative description.

  • Recommended resolution for Twitter cards: 800 x 320 px
    • Maximum file size 3B
  • Recommended resolution summary card: 280 x 150 px
    • Max file size 1MB
    • Title character limit is 70 max and description has a limit of 200 characters max
  • Accepted video formats: .MP4 and .MOV
    • Maximum video length is 140 seconds
    • Maximum frame length is 40 fps

Youtube

  • Recommended resolution for profile photo: 800 x 800 px
    • Accepted file formats JPEG, BMP, PNG, or GIF
  • Recommended resolution for channel cover image: 2560 x 1440 px

The channel cover image is displayed at the top of a YouTube channel. This image tells your viewers what type of content to expect from your channel and topics discussed. The best way to optimize this space is to take advantage of the sizing, uploading an image here with a max width of 2560 px will ensure that your image remains clear and high quality across all devices.

  • YouTube image preview thumbnail resolution: 1280 x 720 px, aspect ratio 16:9
    • Minimum width of 640 px
    • For videos to qualify for HD dimensions must be 1280 x 720 px
    • Recommended file size 2 MB

Staying up to date with social media specifications can be intimidating and overwhelming when starting out. Effectively conveying your brand message on social media through images and video begins with familiarizing yourself with each platform. No one expects you to memorize all of the acceptable formats and recommended sizing formats for each platform.

Use this guide as a reference and make it easily accessible at any point in time by bookmarking our Guide to Social Media Videos and Photos Specifications.  

Happy content creating!