Last updated: July 2026.
This page is the export settings that actually matter for YouTube, Instagram Reels, and TikTok, checked against each platform’s own documentation as of July 2026. It covers the numbers the platforms publish, the numbers they don’t, and copy-paste recipes for Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve. Where a figure is measured behavior rather than a published spec, it says so.
One fact governs everything below: all three platforms re-encode 100% of uploads. The file you render never reaches a viewer. Your export settings control exactly one thing, the quality of the source their transcoder sees, and that framing settles most of the arguments people have about bitrate.
Three things most guides get wrong
1. “Upload 4K for better 1080p” is only half right. The trick works, but the resolution doing the work is 1440p, not 4K. Independent VMAF testing in 2026 (Zeb Gardner ran the most thorough set) measured what YouTube’s transcoder delivers from each upload resolution: a 1080p upload comes back at roughly 97.3 VMAF, a 1440p upload at 99.95, and a 4K upload at 99.92. The jump from 1080p to 1440p is the entire gain. The jump from 1440p to 4K is a rounding error that costs roughly double the render time. If your channel delivers at 1080p, export at 1440p. On TikTok and Instagram, 4K does nothing at all, and on TikTok it can make things slightly worse.
2. On Instagram, delivered quality is partly a function of view count. This is not a conspiracy theory. Adam Mosseri confirmed it on record in late 2024: Instagram serves lower-quality encodes to videos that get few views and re-renders higher-quality versions if a video takes off. It works as a sliding scale at the aggregate level, and it remains current policy. No export setting changes it. Your job is to hand Instagram the best source you can and accept that the rest is engagement math.
3. Washed-out uploads are usually a tag, not compression. When a grade looks lifted and flat after upload, the culprit is almost never bitrate. It’s a color metadata mismatch: a Rec.709 gamma 2.4 export carries an NCLC 1-2-1 tag, players and platforms assume 1-1-1, and the gamma difference plays back as washed-out contrast. Compression changes detail; it does not change contrast. The fix is a one-line export setting, covered in the gamma section below. The other common cause is HDR phone footage uploaded to TikTok without tone mapping, covered in the TikTok section.
YouTube
YouTube publishes the most complete upload spec of the three, on its recommended upload encoding settings page. The container is MP4 with the moov atom at the front of the file (“fast start”) and no edit lists. Video is H.264 High profile, progressive, closed GOP, two consecutive B-frames, CABAC, 4:2:0 chroma. Audio is AAC-LC or Opus at 48 kHz, with Eclipsa Audio (Google and Samsung’s 3D audio format) added to the official spec in 2025. Audio bitrate targets are 128 kbps mono, 384 kbps stereo, and 512 kbps for 5.1.
These are YouTube’s official SDR video bitrate targets. The first figure covers standard frame rates (24, 25, 30), the second covers high frame rates (48, 50, 60).
| Resolution | SDR, 24/25/30 fps | SDR, 48/50/60 fps |
|---|---|---|
| 720p | 5 Mbps | 7.5 Mbps |
| 1080p | 8 Mbps | 12 Mbps |
| 1440p | 16 Mbps | 24 Mbps |
| 4K (2160p) | 35-45 Mbps | 53-68 Mbps |
| 8K | 80-160 Mbps | 120-240 Mbps |
HDR uploads get their own, higher table:
| Resolution | HDR, 24/25/30 fps | HDR, 48/50/60 fps |
|---|---|---|
| 1080p | 10 Mbps | 15 Mbps |
| 1440p | 20 Mbps | 30 Mbps |
| 4K (2160p) | 44-56 Mbps | 66-85 Mbps |
| 8K | 100-200 Mbps | 150-300 Mbps |
Treat these as floors, not ceilings. YouTube re-encodes everything into VP9 and AV1 for delivery (AV1 is increasingly the primary rung; low-traffic videos may sit on VP9 or even H.264 rungs), so extra bitrate in your upload costs you nothing but upload time and buys the transcoder a cleaner source. In the same 2026 testing, the best-scoring upload masters were H.265 or AV1 at around 60 Mbps in 10-bit, which came back at roughly 99.7 VMAF, or DNxHR HQX if your connection can move files that size. The official accepted-format list includes MOV, MP4, WebM, HEVC, ProRes, DNxHR, and CineForm. AV1 uploads are not on that list but are accepted in practice and matched H.265’s top scores in testing; treat AV1 as a works-but-undocumented option.
Loudness
The effective target is -14 LUFS integrated with true peaks at -1 dBTP. YouTube does not publish this number on any official help page; it’s measured behavior, pinned down by tools like Production Advice’s loudness analysis, and it has held stable for years. The mechanic matters more than the number: YouTube only turns audio down. If your mix is louder than -14 LUFS, playback gets attenuated to match. If it’s quieter, YouTube leaves it alone (the “Stable Volume” feature, on by default since 2024, is the one exception). So -14 LUFS is a sensible target, not a compliance wall, and mixing to -13 or -12 costs you a decibel or two of gain reduction, not quality. You can check any published video’s normalization via right-click, Stats for nerds, “content loudness.”
Shorts
The official definition: any square or vertical video up to 3 minutes, uploaded on or after October 15, 2024, is a Short. YouTube recommends 9:16 at 1080×1920, and Shorts playback tops out at 1080p, so there is no reason to render above that. One licensing note: music from the audio picker gets complicated past the one-minute mark. Some licensed tracks now allow up to 90 seconds in a 3-minute Short, others stay limited, and a Short over a minute carrying an active Content ID claim gets blocked outright. Check the track’s limit in the picker before you build the edit around it.
YouTube export recipe
| Resolution | 2560×1440 for a 1080p channel; 3840×2160 for a 4K channel |
| Codec | H.264 High profile (or H.265/AV1 10-bit ~60 Mbps for the best master) |
| Bitrate | 1440p: 24 Mbps target / 30 max. 4K: 45 target / 60 max |
| Audio | AAC-LC, 384 kbps, 48 kHz stereo |
| Extras | MP4, fast start (moov atom front), closed GOP, 4:2:0. Mix around -14 LUFS, -1 dBTP |
Instagram Reels
Instagram’s most precise official numbers live in Meta’s developer documentation, of all places. The spec: MP4 or MOV, no edit lists, moov atom at the front; H.264 or HEVC, closed GOP, 4:2:0; AAC audio at 48 kHz, 128 kbps stereo or less; maximum width 1920 pixels; 9:16 recommended; 23 to 60 fps; VBR accepted up to 25 Mbps. Reels run from 3 seconds to 15 minutes on the API path, with a 300 MB file cap there; app uploads take much larger files, and Meta publishes no single official number for that cap.
On length: in-app Reels recording went from 90 seconds to 3 minutes in January 2025, every video posted to the feed is now a Reel, and the ceiling has kept climbing since. Uploads up to 20 minutes rolled out account by account through 2025, and the in-app camera itself records 20 minutes as of November 2025; the API path is the holdout at 15. The catch is distribution, not ingestion. Reels longer than 3 minutes are deprioritized for recommendation to non-followers, so the long ceiling is real but the 3-minute mark is where reach economics change.
What Instagram delivers is another matter. A 1080×1920 source typically plays back somewhere between 720p and 1080p at low single-digit Mbps, and as covered up top, where you land on that range depends partly on how the video performs. Export headroom under the 25 Mbps cap costs you nothing, so the practical recipe is 8 to 12 Mbps rather than something lean.
HDR on Instagram: yes, actually
Here’s the part most export guides miss entirely: Instagram has a real HDR pipeline, and the results look good. Meta’s engineering team has documented it since 2023. Upload HLG or PQ and the servers keep the original HDR color information, then generate both HDR and SDR renditions: HDR-capable phones get the real thing, everyone else gets a server-side tone map. iPhone footage gets an extra layer, because iPhones shoot Dolby Vision profile 8.4 (an HLG-compatible flavor), and since June 2025 that dynamic metadata survives all the way into the AV1 files Instagram delivers. Of the three platforms, this is the one where delivering HDR pays off on screen.
The practical rule: HLG, not PQ. Meta’s pipeline accepts both, but PQ uploads play back as flat SDR in practice; HLG is what triggers real HDR playback. Export HEVC 10-bit (Main10) at 1080×1920, tagged Rec.2100 HLG, under the same 25 Mbps cap, with “Upload at highest quality” on in the app. Two quirks to plan for: the HDR rendition can take a day or two to appear (fresh uploads often play SDR first, so don’t panic-delete), and Resolve’s free version can’t make this file, since its H.265 export is 8-bit. This is a Studio or Premiere job.
Safe zones
Instagram’s UI overlays live on top of your frame. Keep text and graphics out of the top 14% (about 270 pixels of a 1920-pixel frame) where the username sits, and the bottom 35% (about 670 pixels) where the caption, audio attribution, and CTA stack up. Those percentages come from Meta’s own ads safe-zone guidance, and Ads Manager draws the same guardrails on ad creative; the bottom margin is bigger than most templates assume, so check yours. Also remember the feed preview crops your 9:16 frame to a 4:5 center cut, so anything essential should survive that crop. Covers are 1080×1920 with the same center-crop caveat.
Instagram export recipe
| Resolution | 1080×1920 (9:16) |
| Codec | H.264 High profile, closed GOP, 4:2:0 |
| Bitrate | 8-12 Mbps VBR (cap is 25) |
| Frame rate | 30 fps (23-60 accepted) |
| Audio | AAC, 128 kbps, 48 kHz stereo |
| HDR option | HEVC Main10 (10-bit), Rec.2100 HLG tag, same bitrate cap. HLG only; PQ falls back to SDR |
| Extras | MP4, fast start, no edit lists. Keep text out of the top ~14% and bottom ~35%. In the app, enable “Upload at highest quality” |
TikTok
TikTok’s official numbers come from its Content Posting API documentation: MP4 recommended (WebM and MOV accepted), H.264 recommended (H.265, VP8, and VP9 accepted), 23 to 60 fps, resolution accepted up to 4096×4096, files up to 4 GB. Length is account-dependent: the baseline is 3 minutes, accounts step up through 5- and 10-minute tiers, and 60-minute uploads via web and TikTok Studio have gone from a 2024 experiment to widely available. The API caps at 10 minutes regardless. In-app uploads cap around 287.6 MB; the web uploader takes the full 4 GB.
The 4K question has a clear answer here: it hurts, mildly. TikTok accepts 4K but delivers at roughly 1080p maximum, and its transcoder is the most aggressive of the three platforms. A downscale done in your NLE, with proper filtering, beats the downscale TikTok’s pipeline does in a hurry. Render at 1080×1920 and let the only resize in the chain be the one you controlled.
The HDR warning
TikTok’s HDR story improved on paper and stayed risky in practice. There is HDR playback now: in December 2025 TikTok shipped a viewer-side toggle that turns HDR playback off, which only exists because HDR delivery does. What there still isn’t is a single line of creator-facing HDR documentation; the Content Posting API spec has no HDR, color-space, or bit-depth language at all. So ingest tone mapping stays inconsistent, HLG and Dolby Vision phone footage still comes back with the washed-out or blown-out look people blame on “TikTok compression,” and any viewer on a non-HDR screen (or with that toggle flipped) gets TikTok’s SDR tone map no matter what you delivered. Convert HDR sources to SDR Rec.709 yourself before export. Instagram rewards an HDR delivery; TikTok still punishes it.
TikTok export recipe
| Resolution | 1080×1920 (9:16). Do not upload 4K |
| Codec | H.264 High profile, Level 4.2 |
| Bitrate | 8-12 Mbps at 30 fps, up to ~16 Mbps at 60 fps (TikTok publishes no bitrate guidance; these are the numbers we use) |
| Audio | AAC, 128 kbps or higher, 48 kHz |
| Extras | MP4, SDR Rec.709 only (tone-map HDR sources first), turn ON “Upload HD” in the app |
The NLE recipes
Premiere Pro
For a YouTube master: H.264, 3840×2160 (or 2560×1440 per the finding above), High profile, Level 5.1 or 5.2, VBR 2-pass with target 45 and max 60 Mbps (for 1440p: 24 and 30), 4:2:0, AAC at 384 kbps and 48 kHz. Leave Maximum Render Quality off unless you’re scaling in the export itself.
One thing Premiere’s export dialog doesn’t tell you: 2-pass VBR requires software encoding. The hardware paths (NVENC, Quick Sync, VideoToolbox) are 1-pass only, and H.265 has no 2-pass option at all. Before you commit to slow software renders, know what the quality gap is worth: Puget Systems’ testing found the hardware-vs-software difference real but small, fine-detail loss that disappears entirely after the platform re-encodes your file anyway. So the practical guidance is hardware 1-pass at a generous bitrate for platform uploads, and 2-pass software only when you’re producing a bitrate-starved master that will be watched as-is.
For Reels and TikTok: a 1080×1920 sequence, H.264, VBR 1-pass at 10 to 12 Mbps. Done.
DaVinci Resolve
In the Deliver page: MP4, H.264 or H.265, set “Restrict to” using the YouTube table numbers (or double them, headroom is free), leave key frames on auto, and turn ON “Network Optimization,” which is Resolve’s name for fast start. That single checkbox writes the moov atom to the front of the file, which every platform’s spec asks for.
The free version’s 2026 state is better than its reputation: H.264 and H.265 export are both included up to UHD 3840×2160 and 60 fps, capped at 8-bit, and DNxHR renders at full 10-bit on every platform, as does ProRes on a Mac (and on Windows and Linux since 19.1.4). The hardware-encode split is platform-specific: on Windows and Linux the free tier is software-encode only (NVENC and Quick Sync are Studio features), while on a Mac both tiers encode through VideoToolbox at the same speed. Studio adds 10-bit H.264/H.265 (which is what an HLG delivery for Instagram or YouTube HDR needs), resolutions above UHD, and 120 fps. The takeaway for free users: you can absolutely produce a proper YouTube 4K upload. The H.265 path is 8-bit, so no HDR that way, but the file that comes out meets the spec.
The gamma tag fix (why uploads look washed out)
The mechanics, since this bites almost everyone once. When you grade in Rec.709 gamma 2.4 and export, the file carries an NCLC color tag of 1-2-1. YouTube, and macOS ColorSync underneath every Mac player, expect 1-1-1. The player applies the wrong gamma interpretation and your blacks lift, your contrast flattens, and the upload looks nothing like your grade. The same mismatch is why exports look different in QuickTime before you ever upload; we covered the player side of this in why your exports look different on your iPhone.
The fix in Resolve: keep your timeline color space at Rec.709 gamma 2.4, and set the output color space (or the Deliver-page gamma tag) to Rec.709-A, which writes the 1-1-1 tag the platforms assume. In Resolve’s preferences, also enable “Use Mac display color profiles for viewers” so your viewer matches what the export will do. In Premiere, the default export already tags 1-1-1, so the shift mainly bites QuickTime and ProRes round-trips rather than direct exports. And one wrong turn to avoid: tagging exports as sRGB is not the fix. Rec.709-A matches what the platforms assume; sRGB introduces its own mismatch.
FAQ
Should I upload 4K for better 1080p quality?
Upload 1440p instead. On YouTube, a 1440p upload delivers 99.95 VMAF against 99.92 for 4K and 97.3 for 1080p, so 1440p captures the entire quality gain at roughly half the render time. On Instagram and TikTok, 4K does nothing; TikTok delivers 1080p maximum and its own downscale is worse than yours.
Why does my video look washed out after upload?
Almost always a color tag, not compression. A Rec.709 gamma 2.4 export carries an NCLC 1-2-1 tag while platforms assume 1-1-1; export with a Rec.709-A tag from Resolve to fix it. The other common cause is HDR phone footage uploaded to TikTok without tone mapping; convert to SDR Rec.709 before export.
What bitrate should I use for YouTube 4K?
YouTube’s official SDR target is 35-45 Mbps at 24/25/30 fps and 53-68 Mbps at 48/50/60 fps; HDR runs 44-56 and 66-85. Those are floors. Going higher, up to a 60 Mbps 10-bit H.265 or AV1 master, measurably improves what the transcoder delivers.
Does Instagram support HDR?
Yes, properly, and it looks good. Upload HLG (HEVC 10-bit, Rec.2100 HLG tag) and Instagram generates HDR and SDR renditions; HDR-capable phones get the real thing. HLG is the operative word: PQ uploads are accepted but play back as SDR. iPhone Dolby Vision footage keeps its dynamic metadata into delivery as of mid-2025. Full recipe in the Instagram section above.
Does TikTok support HDR?
Playback exists on supported devices as of late 2025, but there’s still no creator-facing HDR documentation, ingest tone mapping is inconsistent, and viewers can switch HDR off entirely. HLG and Dolby Vision footage usually comes out washed out or blown out. Convert to SDR Rec.709 in your NLE before export, and save the HDR grade for Instagram or YouTube.
What loudness should I master to for YouTube?
-14 LUFS integrated, -1 dBTP true peak. YouTube does not publish this figure; it’s measured behavior, not a written spec. The platform only turns loud content down and never boosts quiet content, so treat -14 as a target rather than a wall. Verify any video via Stats for nerds under “content loudness.”
Where to go from here
These settings cover platform delivery. If you’re exporting long-form masters for clients or festivals, the math changes; start with how to correctly export a feature film from Premiere Pro. For budgeting the drive space all these masters and mezzanine files eat, the video storage calculator has per-codec GB-per-hour numbers. And if your renders are the bottleneck rather than your settings, the laptop guide covers which hardware encoders matter for H.264 and H.265 export.
Platforms change these numbers without announcements, so this page gets re-verified against the official docs when they move. If you spot a spec that’s drifted, leave a comment.
