At first, Twitter only let you post videos that were 30 seconds long. Back in 2016, Twitter increased that time limit to 140 seconds (2 minutes and 20 seconds). The length of the video in seconds was also the same length as the number of characters allowed in a tweet, 140 characters. But a couple of years ago, the character limit of a tweet doubled to 280 characters.
However, for a basic user, the video length is still the same. Twitter does allow you to post videos that are up to 10 minutes long. But you have to do a couple of things before you are eligible for that. It’s a fairly simple process and there are no charges for it or anything like that.
Before you start uploading videos on Twitter that are longer than 140 seconds, you need to be registered for Twitter’s Ad Program. You can go to the settings by clicking on your avatar and then opening the Twitter Ad option or just go to www.ads.twitter.com, whatever you find easy and convenient.
If you haven’t used this before, you will be required to add your credit card details. But there is no need to worry because it won’t deduct anything from your account. It just needs this information in case you want to promote your videos.
Once all the necessary information is added and accepted by Twitter, you will see a couple of new options on your account. One of those will be the ‘Creatives’ tab. You can click on it and choose the video option from the dropdown menu.
They will ask you to agree with their Twitter Video Player Terms and you can just go ahead and agree with them or go through them if you’re interested in reading the terms and conditions. Once this is done, you can just start uploading videos that are longer than 140 seconds.
A couple of things that you should keep in mind is that they will ask you if you want to promote your tweet/video. Of course, this promotion will not be free and it will deduct money from your account so keep an eye out for that and use it wisely.
The size of the video has to be under 512 MB if you are a basic account. For business accounts, the limit is 1 GB. Twitter supports MP4 videos with H264 format. Before you upload the video, Twitter will ask you to write the caption for the video (the tweet), the title of the video, description, and Call to Action.
These are optional meta tags, and you can just leave them all blank and upload the video. But writing the caption (tweet) is better as it helps engage more people with your content. You can tweet using Standard Delivery or Promoted Only. Promoted Only will help your tweet spread across the platform and letting other people see it who do not follow your account.
Twitter caps the FPS limit to 40 so you cannot upload videos more than that. The maximum resolutions are 1920x1200 and 1200x1900. You can face issues with the quality of your videos if you do not follow the resolution criteria. So always be mindful while creating or uploading your Twitter videos.