Steps to Resize Video for Instagram

If you’re using Instagram marketing to drive website traffic and gain customers, chances are you’re going to be creating a lot of video content for it. After all, videos on Instagram have grown in number and popularity ever since the launch of Stories and IGTV, and now Reels. Thus, videos are more likely to get you noticed on Instagram, and help you drive website traffic through IG, than photos at the moment.

Besides, IGTV and Stories offer more scope for long-form content than photos anyway, and while Stories may disappear in 24 hours, IGTV doesn’t. Of course, important Stories can always be saved to your Highlights. However, if the videos you share on your IGTV, Stories, and Reels aren’t the right size, they’re likely to look incongruous and seem rather out of place. That’s why it’s better that you resize them before posting for optimal results.

How Resizing Makes You A Smarter Content Creator

There are quite a few ways in which resizing your videos helps you be a smarter content creator. Some of these include:

Saving time and energy spent on creating new content by repurposing existing content for other platforms.
Maximize the effectiveness of your content by making your video more consumable for people on other platforms.
Taking up optimal screen space and grabbing attention by resizing according to specifications for each platform.

Thus, resizing is great for your Instagram marketing, but before we get to how you can resize videos for Instagram, let’s look at the specifications for videos posted on Instagram.

Instagram Video Specifications

While they’re not a 100% enforced on the app, the ideal video specifications for Instagram are as follows:

The best video format to use is MP4.
The best audio format to use is AAC (for separate audio tracks).
Recommended length of a video is between 3-60 seconds; all videos longer than 60 seconds should be posted to IGTV.
Recommended FPS (frames per second) is 30fps.
Recommended bitrate is 3500.

You also have to consider the aspect ratios and dimensions of your video content for Instagram since the app tends to compress video quality to save storage space and mobile traffic. That would mean that the quality of your posted video would be worse than your original file, which is why it is recommended to post videos of the absolute highest quality for each type of Instagram content.

While Instagram lets you post videos and photos of different aspect ratios and dimensions, the recommended aspect ratios and dimensions are as follows:

For Feed and Carousal: Square (1:1) / Portrait (4:5) ; Dimensions – 1080 X 1080p / 1080 X 1350p
For Reels, Stories, Lives, and IGTV: Vertical video (9:16) ; Dimensions – 1080 X 1920p

Abide by these specifications when you resize video for Instagram, and you should do just fine. Now let’s talk about how you can go about actually resizing your video.

Easy Steps to Resize A Video For Instagram

Contrary to what most people think, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to resize videos for Instagram. Many online apps with preset settings can help you do it. You have to pick one and follow instructions, which would usually go as follows:

1. Step One: Open A New Project

This will have you open a new project with the app, upload your video file, and possibly name the project.

2. Step Two: Choose A Preset

This step will have you choose a preset based on the type of Instagram content your video is supposed to be. For example, if you are going to post it on your Instagram Feed, it’d probably be converted to a 1:1 or 4:5 aspect ratio. In contrast, if it is posted on IGTV, Stories, or Reels, it’d probably be converted to a 9:16 aspect ratio.

3. Step Three: Pick The Aspect Ratio With the Most Visibility

The point of resizing your video for Instagram is to ensure that your video stands out and gets the viewer to stop scrolling. This is why vertical videos are recommended on Instagram. You cannot expect a 10-minute-long horizontal (landscape) video that worked well on YouTube to do equally well on Instagram unless you shorten it and change its aspect ratio to match the app’s requirements.

4. Step Four: Export Your Video

Once you have ensured that your video is ready to be posted, you can download the resized video as an MP4 file, and you’re done. The MP4 file format is recommended because it maintains the most quality when uploaded on Instagram.

Additional Tips For Quality Instagram Video Content

Now that you know how to resize your video, here are a few additional tips you can use to create quality Instagram video content:

Crop your video for each platform according to the size rules to prevent Instagram from stretching your video. This will make your video look both professional and much more interesting.
Ensure that your IGTV videos are not more than 10 minutes long or more than 650MB in size. That’s all the file size Instagram will take for IGTV anyway, and more than 10-minute long videos may deter instead of engaging your audience.
Keep your Stories short, as far as possible. Theoretically, you can have up to 4GB of video content on your stories that will get divided when you post it. However, it can get boring fast since attention spans these days are so short. So, don’t ramble and make each second count.
Use Instagram Live to engage with your loyal audience. It goes a long way in building a better relationship with said audience. You can even post your Live to your IGTV afterward.
Ensure that your video is of good quality. You don’t need expensive specialized equipment for this; your phone camera and good tripod will do. But make sure there isn’t too much background noise and that your video is not blurry, or else it won’t be engaging.
Use a video compressor tool to make your video file size smaller before uploading it to Instagram. This will ensure that the quality of your video isn’t compromised. As mentioned before, you can also post the video at the highest possible resolution to reduce the loss of quality.

Conclusion

To conclude, resizing videos for Instagram is quite easy with the right tools. You must upload your video onto your chosen resizing software, pick the right aspect ratio, output format, and file size, and convert your video before downloading it. It’s that easy!

What’s more, correctly resized videos and a good Instagram hashtag strategy are a great way to grow your audience organically and hopefully convert them into customers.