Export settings are configured when you publish or export media from your editing/creation tools. Wistia has a few recommended and required export settings to make uploading easier and ensure the highest possible quality output for your content.

After you upload a file to Wistia, it enters the processing stage where we will encode a series of media assets or derivatives.

The settings on your media are the blueprint for this process. For video files, these assets will be encoded at various sizes and quality levels to ensure a great viewing experience across a wide array of devices and networks. For audio files, we’ll encode a single MP3 asset.

The original file you upload does not get delivered via the Wistia player; we will only serve the optimized media assets we create.

For videos, we use a width-based (or height for vertical videos) encoding algorithm to determine the quality of assets that the video will receive. This means that the wider or taller your original video is, the higher quality output it will have in Wistia.

Each asset we create has a width threshold that must be met in order to receive that quality level, and each quality level has a maximum possible bit rate.

Here is a full list of the assets we can create, and the maximum bit rate for each:

For example, if you want your video to play in 1080p quality, your original video must be at least 1920px wide. If you want 720p quality, your video must be at least 1280px wide. We also support HDR (High Dynamic Range) video derivatives. Head on over here to learn more about uploading HDR videos.

Our system accepts many common file formats, but for the most consistent performance, we recommend exporting video files in MP4 format (suggested) with the H.264 codec (required). For audio-only files, we recommend exporting them in MP3 format.

For non-MP4 video uploads, we will re-encode the video to MP4 after you upload. Below is a list of file formats that Wistia accepts.

We currently require the H.264 codec on all video uploads, which is a common standard for web video. The codec on a media file is responsible for compressing and decompressing the content, and it’s a crucial factor for successful encoding and playback.

Uploading a media file with an unsupported codec may result in a media file that fails to process, or a media file that won’t play at all in certain browsers. Need to transcode your video to H.264? We recommend using the free tool HandBrake.

We currently have limited support for the ProRes video codec; however, this will end up being transcoded to H.264 on our end. You can upload videos encoded with ProRes; it just means a slightly longer processing time due to the additional transcoding step.

Wistia’s player uses HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) to deliver the best possible version of your video at any given time. This means that the Wistia player will switch quality streams depending on the internet speed available, by making regular checks on the viewer’s connection.

Wistia’s adaptive streaming will automatically choose the highest quality version of the video to serve your viewers without buffering. This is also informed by the size of the embedded video—if you’ve embedded a video at a small size like 640x360 wide, we won’t serve a 1920x1080 asset to that space as it’s an inefficient use of bandwidth. However, if the viewer enters fullscreen, we’ll scale up to the highest quality available if the connection can handle it.

If we detect a slower internet connection initially, but the connection speed improves during playback, the player starts on a lower quality, then switches to a higher quality stream based on this detection. The viewers don’t have to touch anything! Check out an example of what this looks like below:

Wistia supports file sizes of up to 26GB. One of the key ways to manage file sizes on your media is to export them with a reasonable bit rate. For videos, we recommend going no higher than 15,000 kbps. Most uploaded videos can be kept in the 6,000–8,000 kbps range unless they include a lot of fine detail — think water, leaves, sand. For a 4k video, you'll want to be in the 12,000-15,000 kbps range.

If you find yourself with a media file under 2 hours long that is larger than 8GB, it’s likely that a compression step was missed, and you may want to re-export the media with a lower bit rate.

Wistia encodes versions of your video with specific maximum bit rates, so a higher bit rate on the original file isn’t necessarily problematic . However, staying within the recommended range of 6,000–8,000 kbps is mainly to keep your file size down, as well as ensuring a shorter upload time.

After upload, your media is encoded into multiple quality derivatives. Most videos process within a few minutes, but larger or longer files take longer. If a video stays stuck, shows only low-quality options, or fails to process, it's often an export-settings or file issue. Try re-exporting as MP4/H.264 and re-uploading — or reach out to our team with a link to the media, and we can retry the encode on our end.

If re-exporting or HandBrake doesn't fix it, contact support with the Wistia media link and the original file.