FlippingBook Publisher
FlippingBook Automation
Salespal
How to ensure videos play fluently?
Product: FlippingBook Online
FlippingBook Online Advanced, Team, and Enterprise allow you to upload MP4 videos up to 500 MB from your device directly into your flipbook. In this article, we explain
- How to prevent MP videos from stuttering.
- How to convert other video formats (AVI, MOV, MKV, or WebM) to MP4.
Dealing with stuttering MP4 videos
A drawback of using MP4 videos compared to services like YouTube is that high-quality MP4 videos freeze or stutter more often. This can make longer videos unwatchable. But even short autoplaying videos can take a few seconds to load, spoiling the experience!
This happens if the viewer's internet connection is not fast enough to keep up with the video. YouTube switches to a lower quality if that happens, but MP4 videos can't do that. Note that even if your internet is fast enough, viewers (especially on mobile!) with slower connections might face interruptions. To avoid slow loading and ensure smooth playback, we advise keeping your videos as lightweight as possible.
Optimizing an MP4 video
If you (or your video editor) want to re-export your MP4 video file, then adjusting the resolution is the most important setting when optimizing for use in a flipbook.
- For an Inline Video that spans the full page width, a width of 640px is more than enough. See for yourself!
- For videos that span less than the page's width, you can decrease the width even further. Make sure the 'maintain aspect ratio' option is enabled so the height adjusts proportionally.
Most of the time, adjusting the resolution is enough, but if needed, you can also adjust the frame rate (24 fps is perfectly fine). You can also use online services like freeconvert.com to do this, as explained below.
Optimize and convert to MP4 video
With Free Convert or similar services, you can convert non-MP4 videos to MP4 and/or reduce their size even if you are not an expert. Let's see how to optimize a video using FreeConvert.
- Upload your video. Select "MP4" as the output format
- Change the resolution to Custom, and set the width to:
- 640px if you want the video to be page-wide.
- If it covers less, adjust the video resolution proportionally to 640. For example, if the video spans around 40% of the page, set the width to 640px x 40% = 256px.
- Leave the height at 0 to keep the aspect ratio.
Balancing quality and efficiency
If you are afraid that this sacrifices too much quality, look at the example links below and see for yourself:
| Video resolution | Video size | Example link | Notes |
| 1920px wide | 15MB | Link | May cause delays or stuttering without a good internet connection. (If this plays fine for you, try on your phone without WiFi, or throttle your browser speed.) |
| 640px wide | 2MB | Link | Still very acceptable quality, even full screen, but a file size that is 7x less! |
| 480px wide | 1MB | Link | Likely fine if not zoomed. Loads almost instantly for everyone. |
The final decision is up to you, but generally speaking, a video that constantly freezes is a lot worse than a smoothly playing video in slightly lower quality!
Need extra help? Contact our Support Team or feel free to book a meeting with one of our Customer Success Specialists.
