TikTok product video specs: length, ratio and file size

The short answer

If you are in a hurry, this is what you need. Sources are listed at the bottom of this article.

• •Aspect ratio: 9:16 vertical. A product listing accepts anything between 9:16 and 16:9, but only 9:16 fills the screen.
• •Length: under 60 seconds for a listing video. Reservation in-feed ads run 5 to 60 seconds, with 9 to 15 seconds recommended by TikTok.
• •File: MP4. Up to 5 MB on a product listing, up to 10 MB through the Product Media Center.
• •Ads: 9:16 from 540 x 960 pixels, up to 500 MB, bitrate from 516 kbps, in .mp4, .mov, .mpeg, .3gp or .avi.
• •Stills on the same product: up to nine square images of at least 800 x 800 pixels.

What TikTok actually asks for

The video on your product listing

This is the video that sits next to your product photos on the TikTok Shop product page. You get one per product. Upload it with the listing and the ceiling is 5 MB. Upload it through the Product Media Center and TikTok asks for MP4, up to 10 MB, an aspect ratio between 9:16 and 16:9, and under 60 seconds.

That gap between 5 and 10 MB is not us being sloppy. TikTok's own two guides give different ceilings for different upload routes, so assume 5 MB if you want one file that works everywhere. And think about what that ceiling means: at a fixed file size, the shorter the video, the more bits per second you keep. Twelve sharp seconds inside 5 MB beat sixty soft ones.

The same video as an ad

Run it as an ad through Ads Manager and the limits get more generous. For non-Spark ads TikTok asks for 9:16 from 540 x 960 pixels (16:9 from 960 x 540 and 1:1 from 640 x 640 are allowed too), a file up to 500 MB and a bitrate of 516 kbps or higher. Supported formats are .mp4, .mov, .mpeg, .3gp and .avi, and the duration is not capped at a minute there.

For reservation in-feed ads TikTok gets more specific: 5 to 60 seconds, 9 to 15 recommended, and a bitrate from 2,500 kbps. It also flags the safe zone. Text and logos outside it get covered by the interface and the caption, and the longer your caption, the smaller that safe area becomes.

9:16 is not a crop of 16:9

This is where most brands come unstuck. You already own lifestyle imagery, almost always landscape, made for your webshop and your dealers. A vertical video asks for 9:16, which leaves you roughly a third of the width of a landscape frame.

In the example above the tap and the robe disappear, and the bath no longer fits inside the frame. A composition that reads calmly in landscape becomes a close-up of an edge in vertical. You cannot fix that with a crop. You fix it by framing vertically before the image exists: product centred, and enough room top and bottom for captions and interface.

That is extra work, but it is the cheapest place to do it. We went through what each channel asks for in product image resolution: what you need per channel.

The first two seconds

Meeting the specs is the easy part. What a product video has to do is make clear straight away which product this is and why anyone should keep watching. This is how we build them:

• •Open on the product, not on a logo or an intro.
• •Show what it is before you show what it does.
• •One message per video. Two features is already a lot for fifteen seconds.
• •Show scale: something beside it, or a hand holding it, so the size reads correctly.
• •Make it followable without sound, with text inside the safe zone.
• •End on the full product again, because that frame is the one people remember.

Step by step

• •Step 1. Pick one message per product. Not the whole product page, but the single thing someone should remember.
• •Step 2. Set the frame before you make anything: 9:16, product centred, top and bottom kept clear.
• •Step 3. Make or choose the still the video starts from. That image decides the rest.
• •Step 4. Keep it short. Ten to fifteen seconds covers most products.
• •Step 5. Export as MP4 and check the file size against the limit of wherever you are uploading.
• •Step 6. Watch it on a phone, muted, with your thumb half over the screen. That is the real test.

If you sell through dealers and retailers

Most of the brands we talk to do not only sell direct. They sell through dealers, retailers and marketplaces. That gives vertical video a second life: not just on your own account, but with everyone who sells your product. In practice it is exactly the asset that never arrives. Packshots and landscape lifestyle images get shared; vertical video stays with the brand.

So if you are going to produce vertical anyway, set it up for your sales channel rather than for your own feed alone. You can see how brands handle that in our customer stories, and see how it works if you want the production side.

At LensLab we make short product videos with AI, with a creator from our team reviewing the work before it reaches you. From the platform you publish imagery straight to Facebook and Instagram. For TikTok you download the file and upload it yourself. What it costs is on our pricing page.

What we see in practice

Two things keep coming back. First: a video is never better than the image it starts from. A still that is just about good enough on a product page falls apart in motion, because the eye re-reads every frame. A soft edge or a detail that is slightly wrong is almost invisible when still and obvious when moving.

Second: most of the time does not go into the video, it goes into deciding which product deserves one. With fifty or five hundred SKUs you cannot film everything, and that choice matters more than the execution. Our advice is dull but it works: start with your best sellers, make vertical imagery that also stands up as a still, and build the video around that. There is more on the trade-offs in having product video made and in AI product video: what it does well.

Sources

TikTok Shop Academy, Using Product Media Center to upload images faster: MP4 only, up to 10 MB, aspect ratio between 9:16 and 16:9, shorter than 60 seconds.

TikTok Shop Academy, Best Practices for Product Listings: up to nine square images of at least 800 x 800 pixels and one video of no more than 5 MB per listing.

TikTok Ads Manager Help Center, TikTok Auction In-Feed Ads: 9:16 from 540 x 960 pixels, up to 500 MB, bitrate from 516 kbps.

TikTok Ads Manager Help Center, TikTok reservation in-feed ad specifications: 5 to 60 seconds, 9 to 15 recommended, bitrate from 2,500 kbps and guidance on the safe zone.