Promotional video specs you need to know (2020)
When creating a promo video for your product, there are a few video specs that you should pay attention to. For example, what aspect ratio goes on which social media, how big should the video be, should i use 4K, how long does the video need to be?
These are all common questions that you should ask yourself before making each promo video, and at first, they might seem a bit daunting but when you realize that there are a few standard rules it's not that hard actually. So let's clear up the mystery around all of the video specs that you should know when creating a promo video!
Video Format (Aspect Ratio)
This is a really important number, that you want to get right because the goal of your promo video is to take the attention of your viewer, and to do that you need to take as much screen real estate as you possibly can - and you will achieve that with a right video aspect ratio. There are four main aspect ratios for any promo video nowadays, they are:
- 16:9 Landscape (Wide)
- 4:5 Portrait
- 1:1 Square
- 9:16 Instagram Story
Of course, there are many others but you don't really see them in promo videos. These four cover all of the social media, and other places where you will advertise your product.
What format solely depends on the place you are placing your promo video. Every format should work in each place, but the main thing is how much real estate will it cover. Here are some of the main places your video can go to:
- Youtube - Landscape
- Instagram - Portrait, Square
- Instagram Story - Story
- Facebook - Portrait or Landscape
- Your website(For promo videos you post on your website) - Landscape
A huge help when choosing the format can be the Facebook Ads guide. It contains all of the needed info you need!
Video Dimensions (Size)
There are a few common video sizes that get used throughout the Internet, so if you know these you can be sure when making your next promo video.
1080p is a resolution of 1920px by 1080px and it's pretty much the standard used everywhere, it's called Full HD and it's little brother is 720p which is 1280px by 720px, also called HD. Contrary to what you think, you don't really need 4k or even 2k as the majority of your promo videos will be seen on a tiny screen of a smartphone.
Even if they are seen on a computer, chances that the person using it has a 4K screen are slim, so (for now) using anything bigger than 1080px for a promo video would be a waste of resources.
As you can guess, the resolution depends on the aspect ratio, and as we have the four main aspect ratios, here are the resolution variations for those aspect ratios.
Video Duration
Okay, so this is something I've been encountering for years now working as a freelancer and making videos like these - but your promo video doesn't need to be 3 minutes long.
You don't need to tell EVERYTHING in it, starting from the day you got the idea for your product all the way to the present day. You just need to tell the important stuff, and while creating a script for a promo video is an artform for itself the least amount you can do is to keep it short.
The short promo video you will be advertising doesn't need to sell your product - it just needs to hook the viewer to go to your website and then your website can do the job. That's why you don't need everything crammed into your video, it just needs to say what is your product, what is the problem you are solving, how are you solving the problem and what's the benefit for the buyer.
There have been numerous researches around the durations and the attention spans of a modern human but the rule of thumb is:
- Short Social Media Ad - 20 to 30 seconds
- An explainer on a website - 60 to 90 seconds
- Everything else - 30 to 120 seconds
That's pretty much it, these are the video specs you should know. You can go create your winning promo video. I hope you found this helpful.
If you did, you will probably like Plainly - it's a promo video generator allowing you to connect Adobe After Effects projects to data and automate your video production and reach more customers.
