Disclaimer: Magenticians does not necessarily agree with the views expressed in this guest post. They are presented to bring to light all diverse views in the Magento and general ecommerce community.
Many Magento websites these days feature product videos on their product pages, and this makes a world of difference for store conversion rates. The fact of the matter is that videos allow you to showcase the product in the very best light, and give customers a great opportunity to see it in action. Before you start adding product videos to Magento stores, you should first make sure that the video content is optimized for proper display and that the videos do not slow down the store. All this depends on how you intend to publish videos on Magento.
Embedded Videos in Magento
The most popular way of adding product videos to Magento is to embed them from YouTube or Vimeo (and other video hosting platforms). Here are the best tips for optimizing videos for these platforms:
1. YouTube
To optimize videos for YouTube, you should make sure they are encoded in MP4 using H.264 – though other common formats should also be fine. Ideally, the video should have the same framerate as the original recording, unless you need to deinterlace the video. Arguably the most important aspect is the resolution – and you should try to use one of the standard 16:9 resolutions such as 720p or 1080p. If your video has a resolution other than 16:9, it may appear with black bars on the left and right or top and bottom, something you should avoid at all costs.
2. Vimeo
Similar to YouTube, Vimeo recommends encoding videos in MP4 using H.264 but supports other formats as well. At one time, it had strict rules regarding framerate but now it supports a wider option, so you should use the same frame rate as the video was recorded. To avoid the black border bars, you should use standard 16:9 aspect ratio resolution. Technically, there are ways to customize the embedded player to avoid black bars when using other aspect ratios, but it is safer to use standard resolutions such as 720p or 1080p. If you’re embedding videos from other platforms, you should look up their recommended format and settings.
Self-Hosted Videos on Magento
It is possible to upload and self-host videos on Magento stores via extensions. However, optimizing such videos is a much-involved task. For starters, you’ll need to be aware of the formats and settings that the extension supports, though MP4 with H.264 is normally a good start. Additionally, if you’re self-hosting videos on Magento, you will have to consider the fact that bandwidth will be used up every time a video is played. Because of this, you may have to compromise the quality and lower the bitrate of the videos, so that they don’t take up as much bandwidth. If you need to adjust your video format or settings to optimize them for Magento, you could try using Movavi Video Converter. It will make
video conversion easy, and lets you convert your video to MP4 with H.264 or any other popular formats. On top of that, you could adjust the bitrate and compress the videos, resize resolution, aspect ratio, and more. Suffice to say, Movavi Video Converter provides you with the tools you need to optimize your videos before you upload and publish them on Magento. All it takes is a few clicks and your video will be converted into the right format, resolution, aspect ratio, and bitrate.
Author Bio:
Ragini has run several ecommerce websites and is a big fan of the Magento platform. She is currently focused on optimizing Magento websites to increase their page speeds.