Getting a video under the YouTube Shorts size limit

A clip that plays fine on your desktop can still stall or fail when you upload it as a Short. The usual culprit is file size, and it is easy to fix once you understand why it happens.

Why your export is bigger than it needs to be

Editing software exports at high bitrates by default, because it assumes you might want a master quality file. For a Short, that is wasted weight. A vertical clip displayed on a phone does not need the data rate of a broadcast master. So the file leaving your editor is often several times larger than what the platform will actually show, and that excess is what makes uploads slow or unreliable on a weak connection.

What the limits look like

Short form platforms cap length, resolution, and practical file size. The exact numbers shift over time and differ between YouTube Shorts, Reels, and TikTok, so the safe habit is not to memorize a number but to upload a lean file every time. A well compressed vertical clip a few minutes long should be small enough that no platform limit is ever in question.

How to shrink it

Export from your editor as MP4, the universally accepted format.
Run the file through a compressor to re-encode it at a sensible bitrate for mobile playback.
Upload the compressed version. It posts faster and plays without buffering.

This is exactly what TinyVid was built for: drop the clip in, get a smaller MP4 back, upload it. For the deeper reasoning on quality versus size, see how to compress video without losing quality.

One more step most people skip

Getting the file uploaded is not the same as getting it found. Captions, titles, and the page a video sits on all shape whether it surfaces in search and in AI answers. If discovery matters to you, this overview of how search engines handle video and other media is worth a read.