Supported YouTube file formats
MP4 is the best video format for YouTube. YouTube does recommend using MP4 with H. 256 video codec and AAC audio codec because it produces high-quality videos with small file sizes. MPEG4, MOV, WMV, AVI, FLV, 3GPP, and MPEG PS video formats are also supported on YouTube.Jul 13, 2020
MP4 is the best video format for YouTube. YouTube does recommend using MP4 with H. 256 video codec and AAC audio codec because it produces high-quality videos with small file sizes. MPEG4, MOV, WMV, AVI, FLV, 3GPP, and MPEG PS video formats are also supported on YouTube.Jul 13, 2020
- . MOV.
- . MPEG4.
- . MP4.
- . AVI.
- . WMV.
- . MPEGPS.
- . FLV.
- 3GPP.
- Apple Animation Codec
- Apple Intermediate Codec
- Apple ProRes
- AVCHD (including AVCCAM, AVCHD Lite, and NXCAM)
- DV (including DVCAM, DVCPRO, and DVCPRO50)
- H.264
- HDV
- HEVC
- iFrame
- Motion JPEG (OpenDML only)
- MPEG-4 SP
- Photo JPEG
- XAVC-S
- 3ivx MPEG-4
- AV1 / VP9
- AVC0 Media AVA0 Media
- BitJazz SheerVideo
- CineForm
- Cinepak
- DivX
- Flash Video
- FlashPix
- FLC
- H.261
- Implode
- Indeo video 5.1
- Intel Video 4:3
- JPEG 2000
- Microsoft Video 1
- Motion JPEG A
- Motion JPEG B
- On2 VP3, VP5, VP6, VP6-E, VP6-S, VP7, VP8, VP9
- Perian collection of codecs (Microsoft MPEG-4, DivX, 3ivx, VP6, VP3, and others)
- Pixlet
- Planar RGB
- QuickTime files encoded using still image formats (SGI, TGA, PNG, and others)
- RealVideo
- Sorenson 3
- Sorenson Sparc
- Sorenson Video / Video 3 / YUV9
- Streambox ACT-L2
- Windows Media Video 7, 8, 9
- Xiph.org’s Theora Video
- ZyGoVideo
Convert incompatible media not contained in an iMovie library
To convert an incompatible media file, open it with QuickTime Player (version 10.0 and later) in macOS Mojave or earlier, then save a copy with a new name. This method isn't supported in macOS Catalina.
You can also use Compressor to transcode one or more media files into a format such as H.264, HEVC, or Apple ProRes. These formats will be supported in versions of macOS after macOS Mojave. H.264 and HEVC preserve image quality with the smallest file size. ProRes preserves the best image quality and provides better performance when editing in iMovie, but creates much larger files that use more storage space than H.264 and HEVC files use.