SmartVideo accepts a wide range of video file formats. You don’t need to pre-convert your videos before uploading - SmartVideo handles the transcoding automatically.
Supported formats
- MP4 (H.264) - recommended for best compatibility
- MOV
- WebM
- AVI
- MKV
If you have your video in MP4 with H.264 encoding, that’s the ideal starting point. But if your source file is in another format from the list above, SmartVideo will transcode it during the optimization process without any extra steps on your end.
No file size limits
There are no restrictions on the size of the video files you upload. Whether it’s a 50 MB product demo or a 10 GB training video, SmartVideo will process it.
Upload the highest quality you have
SmartVideo encodes multiple quality levels from your source file so viewers get the best experience based on their connection speed. Starting with a higher-quality source gives SmartVideo more to work with, which means better results across all quality levels.
If you only have a compressed version available, that will still work fine - just know that SmartVideo can’t add quality that isn’t in the original.
Where to upload from
For the best results, use one of these sources:
- SmartVideo Library - upload directly through the SmartVideo Dashboard
- Direct URL - host your source file on Amazon S3, Wasabi, Google Cloud, or your WordPress Media Library and point to it with a direct link
- Vimeo embeds - SmartVideo can auto-convert these when you opt in (check the auto-convert setting in the WordPress plugin, or include
autoreplace: { vimeo: true }in your snippet). Auto-conversion from YouTube is currently paused — see Automatic Vimeo conversions for the manual-upload workaround.
For a full list of supported file sources and setup guides, check out our video file sources collection.
Keywords: file format, MP4, MOV, WebM, AVI, MKV, H.264, video format, supported formats, file size, transcoding