Video Format for Twitter Explained: Your Questions Answered

Twitter may be all about shouting quick 280-character messages to the world, but the platform is quickly becoming a go-to destination for video as well, which makes understanding video format for Twitter all the more important.
According to the company itself, there are now nearly 1.2 billion daily video views on Twitter (2x growth over the previous 12 months), and video tweets attract 10 times as much engagement than non-video tweets.
It makes sense to include Twitter in your video marketing plans, but you should always strive for the highest possible video quality to obtain the best results. Follow these quick guidelines to properly format your video:
Depending on which device you’re uploading your video from, you’ll have slightly different format restrictions.
If you’re uploading your video on mobile, you can use MP4 and MOV video formats. For desktop uploads, you can use MP4 with H.264 video codec and AAC audio codec.
Additionally, make sure that your video meets the following two Twitter video format requirements:
While Twitter’s video capabilities are limited by the platform’s design, you can still upload landscape, vertical, and square videos.
However, upload requirements relating to size and dimension are a little stricter than YouTube or Facebook.
One thing to keep in mind is that Twitter recommends that horizontal videos be uploaded with a resolution of 1280×1024 (or slightly lower resolution than the maximum) to assure the best results.
The most important thing to keep in mind when you start uploading videos to Twitter is that the service is optimized for mobile videos over desktop. (Not to worry; our video maker for Twitter has the optimal Twitter video size).
If you’re using your phone to upload the video, make sure to edit it and record in a format that meets the file size limit. We like to use Videoleap for jobs like this since you can select from a variety of editing tools to perfect your clip for upload.
Additionally, here are some tips you can use to generate the best possible Twitter video quality: