The online world seems to have been buzzing about Instagram’s new IGTV since it was officially announced yesterday. The Internet is divided – or at least, my social media timelines are. A huge proportion are in the “WOO! YAY!” camp, although there are plenty of people moaning about vertical video syndrome.
If you’re of the latter opinion, sorry, can’t help. But if you’re one of those who wants to jump on the new vertical video service that lets you upload videos up to an hour in length, read on. In this video, filmmaker Jason Boone goes through the whole process in Premiere Pro of creating and uploading your vertical video content.
Creating video for IGTV is a lot like creating video for anything else, but there are a few limitations. The first is that your video is vertical. It can be either a 4:5 aspect ratio or a 9:16 aspect ratio. Obviously, the 4:5 aspect ratio won’t fill your device’s entire screen (assuming it is a 16:9 screen), but it will help you to get some of that width back.
For 4:5 video, Jason works in a resolution of 854×1080 resolution. For 9:16 video, he uses 900×1600 resolution. But these aren’t the only limitations. IGTV allows videos from 15 seconds long up to an hour. If you’re not a big huge verified account, though, that limit is 10 minutes. A little unfair? Perhaps. But 10 minutes is still long enough to do an Instagram Stories style vlog.
According to Jason there are file size limitations with each of those durations.
- Up to 10 minutes: 650MB
- Up to 1 hour: 5.4GB
But I’m not sure how accurate that is. When I go to upload to Instagram, it tells me that I can upload a video of between 15 seconds and 10 minutes and that it must be below 3.6GB. Maybe the different file size limits are a regional thing, or maybe it’s something they’re still tweaking.
Regardless, Jason has created two Premiere Pro export presets for you to download and install. That way, the only thing you need to keep track of is the file size, which you can adjust with the bitrate slider.
When it comes to uploading, there are three different ways you can do it. You can upload through the regular Instagram app, as well as the new IGTV app for both Android and iOS. However, unlike all the other forms of Instagram content, you can actually upload straight from your desktop for IGTV through the Instagram website (and for videos longer than 10 minutes, this is required).
Uploading through the website is probably the easiest way if you’re exporting from Premiere Pro or another editor anyway, regardless of the duration.
You have to create your “channel” first, but then it’s a simple drag & drop interface. You upload a cover photo (like a YT Thumbnail), enter in a title & description and hit Post. Finally, just sit and wait for it to upload.
That easy. No having to deal with uploading to Dropbox, downloading to your phone, hoping the quality wasn’t destroyed and forcing yourself to stay at home because you need WiFi on your phone to upload that huge file. Not to mention not having to tap out a huge description with a tiny on-screen keyboard.
I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the whole idea of IGTV. In the past, I’ve not been a massive fan of vertical video. Instagram Stories has kind of warmed me up to the idea. I think I’ll experiment with IGTV, but don’t know if I’ll stick with it long term.
I think the proportion of those that hate vertical video on my various social media feeds might be skewed purely because of the number of filmmakers and photographers I’ve connected with. I’m curious how this is being accepted by the general content-consuming, rather than creating, public.
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