Preparing video for Apple Podcasts (HLS)

When publishing video episodes to Apple Podcasts via Acast, there is a 10 GB file size limit per episode.

This guide explains why the limit exists and how to export or compress your video to stay within it while maintaining great quality.

The 10 GB limit is designed to balance several important factors:

In practice, 10 GB provides a good balance between quality and accessibility for creators and listeners.

To keep your videos well within the limit while maintaining high quality, we recommend exporting episodes using the following settings:

With these settings, most podcast episodes should comfortably remain under the 10 GB limit. Additionally, for Apple HLS, the width of a video cannot exceed 4096px. If the aspect ratio is wider than 16:9, this may result in letterboxing (i.e. black bars at the top and bottom of the video).

Although 4K video (3996 × 2160) offers higher resolution, it significantly increases file size.

Apple Podcasts will be available supported on multiple devices, but viewers typically see very little visual improvement from 4K compared to 1080p.

For this reason, 1080p provides the best balance of quality and file size.

If your video export exceeds the 10 GB limit, you can reduce the file size by lowering the bitrate. You can do this either:

Since workflows vary widely across editing tools, we recommend using a dedicated compression app if needed.

A popular option is HandBrake, a free and open-source video transcoder available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

If you’re using HandBrake:

These settings generally produce high-quality video while keeping file sizes manageable.

If you produce very long episodes, you may need to lower the bitrate slightly to remain under 10 GB.

Approximate limits:

Reducing bitrate slightly can dramatically increase the maximum episode length.

Video quality will be comparable to YouTube.

For example, YouTube recommends around 8 Mbps for 1080p video, which aligns closely with the bitrate recommendations above.