YouTube accepts a wide range of video file formats.The video files below are all accepted by YouTube. Some video formats work best and are most compatible with certain computers, software or devices.
- Windows Media Video (.WMV)
- .3GP (cell phones)
- .AVI (windows)
- .MOV (mac)
- .MP4 (ipod/psp)
- .MPEG
- .FLV (adobe flash)
- .MKV (h.264)
If you do not think your current video file format is recognized by YouTube, you may get the best uploading results from converting your file to MPEG4 video with MP3 audio. You can also review recommended video file formats here.
To convert any video format to one of the accepted formats it is recommended you use FFMPEG. FFMPEG is a command-line tool, so you may like to use free or commercial software to help convert your file. You can easily find this type of software by searching the web.
Windows Movie Maker, by default saves projects as .MSWMM files. .MSWMM files are project files (which means the file only contains the layout of your video and does not contain the final video itself). YouTube does not accept .MSWMM files. To upload your Windows Movie Maker video to YouTube, select the "Save to My Computer" option to save the file to an accepted format. You can then upload the generated file to YouTube.
Keep in mind that each time you convert or "transcode" a video from one type of compression to another, there will be some loss in quality, similar to making a photocopy of a photocopy.
Avoid transcoding a highly compressed video into a format that is accepted as this produces poor results. You'll get better results by going back to your original video editing software (where you initially edited the video), and re-exporting in a format such as MPEG4 with MP3 audio. If that is not an option, exporting the file as a RAW (uncompressed) video format then encoding it in an external program is another alternative.
