Etsy Video Spec Checker

Fixing a video that fails

• Too long or too short. Trim in whatever editor you already have — the phone's own photo app will do it. Aim for the middle of the window rather than the edge, because a clip that reads as 15.02 seconds in one tool can be rejected by another that rounds differently.
• File too heavy. Export at 1080p rather than 4K, and let the editor pick a normal bitrate instead of "maximum quality". A well-encoded 10-second 1080p clip is usually a handful of megabytes, so a file near the limit almost always means an oversized export preset.
• Resolution too low. This one you cannot fix by exporting bigger — upscaling adds pixels but no detail. Reshoot at a higher setting on the camera or phone.
• Deliberately silent. The audio track is stripped on the listing page, so a voiceover or music bed is wasted effort. Shoot for a clip that reads with the sound off.

What a listing video actually has to clear

Three numbers decide whether a listing video uploads: its running time, its file size, and its resolution. The running time has to land inside a narrow window — long enough to show the product moving, short enough to be a loop rather than a film. File size is capped per video, and resolution has a floor rather than a ceiling, so a phone clip from the last several years clears it easily while an old low-resolution export will not. Our guide to Etsy image sizes covers the video slot alongside the ten photo slots, and what to put in it. If a clip fails here on size rather than length, the fix is an export setting rather than a re-shoot, and Etsy listing video export settings turns the length and file-size caps into the bitrate you should actually be exporting at.

This tool reads all of that from the file itself, in your browser. It hands the video to the browser's own decoder, waits for the metadata to load, and reports the duration and the intrinsic pixel dimensions the decoder found — plus the file size, which it already knows. Nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is re-encoded. That is a deliberate limit, not an oversight: transcoding video in a browser tab means shipping a large media library to every visitor and then pinning their CPU for minutes. Judgement and guidance here, actual conversion in a real editor.

One thing worth knowing before you shoot: the audio is removed when the video plays on the listing. Any effort spent on a voiceover, a music bed or a spoken call to action is wasted. Plan the clip as a silent loop — hands turning the product, the material catching the light, the packaging opening — and put anything that needs words into the listing photos or the description instead.

A shot list for fifteen silent seconds

Clearing the spec is the easy half. The harder question is what to point the camera at, because a listing video is not a film — it is closer to the turntable in a shop window. It autoplays muted in a feed the shopper is already scrolling past, there is no narration, no title card and no sound design, and it loops. Everything the viewer learns, they learn from movement. That single constraint decides almost every choice below.

The first second carries more weight than the other fourteen combined, because the clip starts playing while the shopper is still deciding whether to stop. A slow fade-in, a hand entering an empty frame, a wide establishing shot that pulls in later — each of these spends the only moment you were guaranteed to have. Open on the product already filling most of the frame and already in motion. Save the reveal for a still photo, where the viewer chooses when to look.

Shot ideas by product type

• Jewellery. The thing photographs cannot convey is how a piece behaves in light. Rotate it slowly under a single window-lit source so the facets or the hammered texture flare and dim as it turns. Then answer scale, which is the other question every jewellery listing gets: let the piece rest against a hand, a wrist or a collarbone for the last few seconds rather than describing millimetres nobody can picture.
• Apparel. Film drape, not the flat design — the design is already in your photos. A hand running along a hem, a sleeve falling, a slow turn on a hanger, or the fabric being gathered and released all read instantly at feed size. If the garment is printed, frame the print at the size a person standing a few feet away would see it, which is roughly what our t-shirt print placement measurements are working toward anyway.
• Ceramics and homeware. Weight and surface. A hand lifting the mug, turning it so the glaze pooling in the low spots catches the light, setting it back down with a little deliberateness. Buyers look at the handle join and the base, so give both a moment. For anything cylindrical it also helps to show the piece next to something of known size — the same problem our guide to measuring a tumbler exists to solve.
• Stationery and paper goods. Texture and thickness, which flatbed photos destroy. Fan the pages, flex the cover, run a thumb across a foil edge or a deckle, peel one sticker off the sheet. A peel is close to a perfect listing video: it is short, it loops, it shows the material and it proves the product works. Sizes and cut lines are a separate conversation, covered in our notes on die-cut sticker sizes.
• A digital product. There is no object, so film the outcome instead of the file. The printable pinned to a wall or propped in a frame, the template opening and being scrolled, the pattern tiling across a surface, a planner page being written on. A screen recording is legitimate footage as long as the export clears the resolution floor — record at full screen resolution rather than cropping a window out of a small capture.

Shooting handheld without the wobble

Almost nobody has a tripod at the moment they decide to film a listing video, and you do not need one. What you need is to stop the camera moving and let the subject move instead. Brace your elbows against your ribs, or rest the phone on a stack of books, or lean it against a mug — then slide, rotate or open the product in front of it. A fixed camera and a moving product looks composed; a moving camera and a fixed product looks nervous, and the compression that shrinks your file makes every shake worse.

• Change one thing at a time. Rotate or move closer, not both. A clip that does one clear action reads at a glance; a clip that does three reads as a blur.
• Shoot far longer than you need. Roll for a minute and trim the best window out of it. Extra footage costs nothing, a reshoot costs you the setup again, and trimming down is the one edit every phone can do.
• Light from the side, not overhead. A window to one side gives you the shadow that makes texture visible. A ceiling light directly above flattens everything and puts your own shadow into the frame.
• Do not use the zoom. Digital zoom crops into the sensor, so it throws away real pixels — enough of it and the short edge of your export can fall under the resolution floor this tool checks. Move the phone closer instead.

Two videos, and a minimum length Etsy's own pages disagree about

A listing can hold two videos, not one, and most sellers who bother with video at all upload a single clip and stop. The second slot is worth using for a different question rather than a second angle of the same one: one clip for the object itself, one for scale, packaging or the product in use. Between them they can retire most of the messages a shop gets before someone buys.

On length, the upper bound is not in dispute anywhere — fifteen seconds. The lower bound is, and it is Etsy's own documentation doing the disagreeing: as of July 2026 its dedicated help article on listing videos gives a three-second minimum, while its article on creating a listing gives five. Both pages are live at the same time. This tool applies the more conservative five-second floor, which means a clip that passes here passes under either reading. If yours lands between three and five seconds it may well upload without complaint, but it is sitting on ground the documentation does not agree about, and the fix — holding the opening or closing frame a beat longer — costs one export.

Frequently asked questions