With over 77% of people watching videos online, Instagram found an interactive way to engage its audience with Instagram TV (IGTV). This has led Instagram to become one of the biggest social media platforms in the world. But most influencers and content creators are still confused on the correct IGTV dimensions and other requirements.
Over 7 million users have downloaded the IGTV app within the first 2 years. With this much data traffic, it’s the perfect time to invest in your business and to connect with a new audience.
In this article, we’ll discuss the ideal IGTV dimensions and some tips that have helped major influencer marketers in creating high-quality videos and uploading them.
Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
Where is IGTV?
IGTV videos are viewable on the Instagram app. There was an IGTV option on the main feed page on the app; however, only a few people were using that button, so Instagram removed it.
A Facebook representative told TechCrunch, “As we’ve continued to work on making it easier for people to create and discover IGTV content, we’ve learned that most people are finding Instagram content through previews in Feed, the IGTV channel in Explore, creators’ profiles and the standalone app. Very few are clicking into the IGTV icon in the top right corner of the home screen in the Instagram app.”
You can now use IGTV via the Explore page. You can search for any IGTV video, just like how you would search for any other account in the search bar.
What is the Ideal IGTV Dimensions and Specifications
The recommended IGTV dimensions should be 1080 pixels wide and 1920 pixels tall (1080×1920) for the best quality. These dimensions go for IGTV, Instagram video size, Instagram Stories, and Instagram Live videos. The aspect ratio should be 9:16.
Like most Instagram stories or Instagram images, IGTV videos are also viewed in a vertical feed, so it’s best to keep your videos aligned with that approach. As you probably might have noticed, the video size is usually the size of most smartphone screens (Android or iOS).
It is recommended that you should upload your video on the IGTV channel after you’re done with video editing. While you’re uploading your video you can only add or resize a cover image, cut the video, or add sounds.
It may be super exhausting to remember all of these details but it’s worth the effort. It helps make your captivating content more appealing. We’re going to be discussing how to create videos that look great and meet IGTV’s dimension recommendations.
Create an IGTV account
Now that you have all the information and are ready to explore the IGTV world, you can create your IGTV account.
Creating an IGTV account is as easy as it is to create an Instagram account, and you can link both together. All you have to do is follow a few steps which I’ll explain below:
- Download the IGTV app from your smartphone app store
- Sign up for the IGTV or link it to your main Instagram account and it will automatically use your native profile
- Once you click the “browse” button, IGTV will pull up the menu with the gear icon next to the search bar
- Click on “create channel”
- Add your information and set up your channel
All your current Instagram followers will have access to all the IGTV videos that you upload on your main Instagram page. You now only need to worry about creating fun and engaging Instagram videos for your followers.
Instagram Video Length
Instagram has different video lengths for IGTV, Instagram Posts, Stories, or Live videos. If you upload a video to your Instagram stories longer than 15 seconds, the app is going to slice up the longer videos into 15-second sections, like Snapchat, and that too for only up to a minute.
On the other hand, IGTV video lengths go from anywhere between 15 seconds to 10 minutes long. But if you have a larger fanbase or a “verified” account you can upload videos up to 60 minutes long from a computer.
Hopefully, this feature will be available to all Instagram user accounts soon. Since most of the time, new features were only available to influencers and larger fanbase accounts before making it available to everyone in the past.
Lastly, Instagram feed videos play between 3 seconds up to 60 seconds.
All put together, your video posts are suggested to be around 30 seconds. As per Hubspot, comments received regarding video post length had an average consensus of 26 seconds.
Instagram is all about visuals, and trust me there’s a lot of competition. With over 8 billion videos being viewed every day, your video should be compelling enough to keep the user hooked till the end of your video. It’s a part of having a great digital marketing strategy.
Additionally, your IGTV video file should be under 650MB for any video less than 10 minutes. For long-form video going up to an hour, the maximum file size should be 3.6GB. Also, your video format should be MP4.
How to Create your IGTV Cover Photo
It’s always important to have an IGTV Cover especially if you will be uploading a review video on Instagram. This cover photo will show up on the grid, in the form of a thumbnail, and will help the viewers get an idea about the video.
There are many editing tools available in the market such as Adobe Photoshop, Premiere Pro, etc to create IGTV covers and edit videos. And while there may be tutorials available online, they might seem to get too complicated. Alternatively, you can use the online platform: Pixelied.
Pixelied allows you to create IGTV cover photos, and Instagram story covers with ease. You can create your IGTV cover from scratch or by choosing one of the thousands of templates. I’ll explain some steps below:
Step 1 – Create a Design or Choose from a Template
To get started, simply choose from the thousands of Instagram story templates on our free editor.
On the left-hand side, you can choose from thousands of templates. These are already adjusted to the recommended dimensions (1080×1920) so you don’t have to worry about the image sizes.
Step 2 – Editing
Further left, there is a vertical menu bar that has many editing tools and options available. You can add texts, illustrations, shapes, elements, or icons.
You will have loads of images to choose from in the editor. As shown below:
Step 3 – Download
Once you’re done editing and satisfied with the finished product you can go to the upper right corner and hit download. You can now choose your preferred image format you want to download your design in, along with the desired size and quality.
IGTV Tips and Tricks
With so many options available on social media, it can get hard to stay updated. Just as you start to get a grip on things, something new always pops up. With more than one billion users signing up on Instagram every month, it’s the perfect place to improve your business.
However, with this amount of competition, it’s not the easiest thing to do. That’s why some people opt for Instagram marketing. Below I’ll be discussing the nitty-gritty along with some tips to get the best results for your account.
It’s always important to have attention-grabbing cover images on your IGTV channel, and I’ll explain why. When users scroll through your IGTV, that’s the first thing they’ll lay their eyes on. An alluring image will compel more people to click on your videos.
Also, without one, it just might make it look unprofessional, and it will make users have to read the description to get an idea of the video’s context. This makes it harder for people to click and just watch the video without the help of a cover image.
Additional Things to Keep in Mind
Another thing that always matters is consistency. Posting content consistently is super crucial to your IGTV account. Believe it or not, brands or even influencers are only successful because of their engagement.
The more consistent you are with your IGTV videos, the more your followers wait for your content, and engage with it regularly. You need to get them hooked one way or another. Otherwise, it can easily spoil your fan following.
Another thing to notice is that most users usually watch videos on mute or don’t have enough volume turned on to understand each word. It’s best to have on-screen text for your IGTV videos, as they grab attention relatively longer than others.
This adds context to your videos and helps in the viewer’s experience.
Be sure to use as many relevant hashtags as possible to get better reach. It also helps in categorizing posts, to show to those interested. This way you can get discovered by new audiences. But keep in mind that you don’t want to go overboard with hashtags, as it creates negative repercussions.
Bottom Line
It’s safe to say that you now know everything you need to know about IGTV dimensions and Instagram story dimensions.
It’s the perfect opportunity to take advantage of increased engagement, as there is relatively less competition on IGTV. Creating amazing IGTV videos requires good knowledge to understand the specs needed for each video.
It’s important to stick to the video format requirements and keep the aspect ratio and video resolution in mind.
However, don’t focus on IGTV dimensions to the point where you forget about the content you’re posting. There’s a lot of room for creativity in IGTV, regardless of the dimension limits and requirements.
Using this information and an Instagram ad size guide, you can jumpstart your Instagram page today.
