Here's what to do: render your animation at 720p (1280×720) or 1080p (1920×1080), save it as an MP4, and keep the file under 50 MB. That's it. The server handles everything else. It transcodes your video to clean H.264, grabs a thumbnail from a frame in the middle, makes a small hover preview, and keeps your original as a backup.

You don't have to hit a specific resolution the way the old rules demanded. Just render clean 16:9 and upload.

If you like knowing what's happening under the hood, the rest of this page goes into detail.

What to export

MP4 is the format we like best. MOV, M4V, WebM, and AVI all work. Inside, you want H.264 video. It's the default in almost every modern encoder, so chances are you don't have to change anything. If you're working in H.265 or AV1 it will still upload, we just transcode back to H.264 so every browser can play it. Audio should be AAC, stereo if you have it. Mono is fine. 44.1 or 48 kHz sample rate, either works.

Size, shape, and speed

Always 16:9. 720p is the sweet spot. It looks crisp everywhere without destroying your render time. 1080p is also great if you have the headroom. Going below 720p works but your thumbnail and grid preview end up softer than they should.

Keep the frame rate you animated at: 24, 25, or 30 fps. We preserve whatever you send us.

File size

Up to 50 MB. At 720p H.264, an 11-second clip at reasonable quality lands around 3 to 6 MB. 1080p usually comes in around 8 to 12 MB. If your file is much bigger than that, you've probably exported at a bitrate higher than you actually need. Drop it, or flip your encoder into CRF mode.

The easy way: Handbrake

If you don't want to think about any of this, grab our Handbrake preset, import it from Presets → Import, and select it before you hit encode. It produces a file that fits every guideline on this page.

The command line way

If FFmpeg is more your speed, this works:

ffmpeg -i input.mov -c:v libx264 -profile:v main -preset slow -crf 20 \
  -c:a aac -b:a 128k -ac 2 -ar 48000 -movflags +faststart out.mp4

Thumbnails and previews

You don't need to upload one. We pull a frame from the middle of your video and use that. If you want the thumbnail to land on a specific moment, make sure that moment sits near the middle of your timeline.

A few things that'll make your life harder

Rendering below 720p makes every thumbnail look fuzzy. Putting your name, handle, or contact info in the video will get your entry rejected. Voting is meant to be blind and we enforce it. And if you're thinking about uploading a folder of per-frame TIFFs or PNGs: stop and render to a single video file first. The server only knows how to chew on one movie.

Stuck on something, or hit a weird edge case? Come holler at us in the forum.