If you're looking to upload videos on Patreon, it's important to know that while Patreon accepts most modern video formats and CODECs, certain types of videos might need a bit of tweaking to make sure they're optimized for uploading.
This guide will walk you through the steps to standardize your content and help speed up the processing time when uploading videos on Patreon.
You can navigate away from the publishing flow while waiting for a video to process. Simply fill in the post details and publish your video post. The video will process in the background and publish automatically once finished.
You’ll be notified when your post is live. If there are any issues with processing or uploading, we’ll notify you about why it failed so you can make the necessary changes
Standard input specs
Standardizing your videos means ensuring they meet certain input specifications. This can help Patreon process your videos faster and reduce video upload failures.
Standard input has the following attributes:
- 1080p/2K or smaller
- H.264 video CODEC
- 8Mbps or below (hard cap at 16Mbps)
- AAC audio CODEC
Any format used outside the mentioned above is not ideal and may result in extremely slow upload times.
How to create standard input (mobile)
Most mobile devices capture H.264 8-bit 4:2:0 video by default. Here are the main things to watch out for:
- Ensure that the total file bitrate is below 8 Mbps
- Ensure the output file uses SDR (standard dynamic range) imaging. Some newer devices capture video in HDR (High Dynamic Range), which requires 10-bit 422 color and must be re-encoded by Patreon Video to support most devices
- Ensure the output file is smaller than 1080p (1920x1080) or 2K (2048x1152). Some cameras shoot 4K video, which is currently converted down to 1080p when using Patreon Video
- If possible, choose a keyframe interval of 5s or so, but certainly between 2 and 10 seconds, and enable closed-GOP encoding. (If you don't see these options in your app or camera, it's probably the default already)
iPhone camera
When you go to your iPhone settings (as of iOS 17.4.1) and navigate to Camera Formats, you can choose how your videos are captured.
Selecting High Efficiency will capture Video in HEVC (h.265) format which is non-standard. Instead, Video capture on iPhones should select Most Compatible to ensure that video is taken in h.264 codec which will make processing times faster on Patreon’s end.
Non-standard input
Patreon works fine with video outside of the standard input specs. However, because other videos cannot be easily streamed to many modern devices, Patreon must perform an initial encoding operation on non-standard input to create a mezzanine file. This means that non-standard input will be slower to ingest.