Video requirements

We accept content recorded with any camera—including a mobile device—if it meets our technical and legal requirements and our quality standards.   

Businesses, ad agencies, design studios, and marketers want to buy great-looking, distinctive stock video. For your videos to have commercial value, they should be appropriately lit and exposed, free of visual and audio noise, visually stable (unless shakiness if relevant to the content), and lacking in noticeable wobble (“jello artifacts”) or flash banding.  

Here are some more dos and don’ts to help you be successful: 

Cutting  

Do: Make clean cuts so your video doesn’t start on a separate clip.   

Do: Create short clips separating out each take. We accept footage ranging from 5-60 seconds in duration, and we recommend that clips are at least 15 seconds long.  

Do: Leave edit handles at the beginning and end of your video clips — we recommend 1-5 seconds.  

Do: Cut out camera adjustments like focusing and zooming. 

Editing and post-production 

Do: Process your video subtly — clean color footage that is in focus sells well. 

Do: Adjust levels, curves, or brightness/contrast to ensure the best tonal range.  

Don’t: Over sharpen — too much sharpening can bring out noise and unwanted texture. 

Don’t: Increase the contrast drastically — this can introduce noise and you may lose detail. 

Don’t: Oversaturate — if you want to push colors hard for a specific aesthetic, use a secondary color corrector or the vibrance control in the Premiere Pro Lumetri color-grading panel. 

Don’t: Submit raw video files or uncorrected logarithmic gamma (log) footage. Footage shot in log should have a simple color grading applied — we recommend a basic Rec 709 LUT. 

Don’t: Add vignettes or other effects unless they really add to the shot. 

Don’t: Create a video from still images. Timelapse or stop motion videos are the exception. 

Preview images  

Do: Be aware that your video's preview image will be automatically generated from a frame 5 seconds into the video. 

Audio  

Do: Preserve ambient sound if the quality is good. 

Do: Obtain model releases from all identifiable speakers, or remove the audio. 

Do: Remove audio that’s unusable, such as over-modulated audio or sound that could be trademarked. It’s perfectly acceptable to submit clips without audio. 

Don’t: Add music or sound effects. 

Variations  

Do: Submit variations including multiple camera angles, camera movement, and composition options such as wide angle, tight, etc. 

Don’t: Submit shots that are only marginally different or different due to post-production effects. Make sure each submission offers something unique to the customer. 

Submitting  

Don’t: Up-res footage — for example, from HD to 4K. Submit footage as shot or smaller, if necessary. 

Learn more about the Adobe Stock review process. 

Follow these tech specs and guidelines: 

Duration and file size 

Minimum duration: 5 seconds

Maximum duration: 60 seconds 

Maximum file size: 3900 MB (3.9 GB) 

Horizontal Resolution 

• Upload source content in one of the following resolutions:  

1. 1920x1080 pixels 
   
2. 2048x1080 pixels 
   
3. 3840x2160 pixels 
   
4. 4096x2160 pixels 
   
5. 4096x2304 pixels 

• Upload content in its native frame size. Don’t down-convert or up-convert from the original camera resolution unless the source resolution is greater than 4K. 
• We accept video clips that are 1920 pixels wide up to full DCI 4K at 4096 pixels wide. 
  
• Standard sizes are 1920x1080 (HD), 2048x1080 (2K), 3840x2160 (UHD), 4096x2160 (4K), and 4096x2304 (4K-16x9). However, we also accept most wide screen aspect ratios such as 2.39:1 which can result in lower height pixel counts. 
  

Vertical Resolution

• Upload source content at one of the following resolutions:

   1. 2304x4096

   2. 2160x4096

   3. 2160x3840   

   4. 1080x1920

• Shoot vertical video natively and upload video in the clip’s 9:16 aspect ratio.  Do not convert the video to 16:9 aspect ratio and upload horizontally. 
  
• For vertical video, we recommend a duration of 10 to 30 seconds for each clip, although the minimum length is 5 seconds and maximum length is 60 seconds. 
  
• Please include the keywords “vertical” and “video” in your titles and keywords. 

Square Resolution

• Upload source content at one of the following resolutions:

      1. 1080x1080

      2. 2160x2160

• Upload video in the 1:1 aspect ratio.

Frame rate 

• Don’t convert clips from their native frame rate unless you’re submitting a slow-motion or fast-motion video. 
  
• Deliver standard frame rates — 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94, or 60. 
  

 

Video container formats 

• We accept MOV, and MPG, MP4 formats. 
  
• Whenever possible, use a professional-grade transcoding tool such as Adobe Media Encoder to retain the original video quality and avoid recompression. 
  

 

Video compression (codecs) 

We recommend: 

• ProRes 
  
• H.264 

We also accept: 

• MPEG 2 
  
• MPEG 4 
  
• Motion JPEG (MJPEG) 
  
• PNG 

Audio 

• Sound must be set to 48 kHz, 16-bit uncompressed. 
  

 

Use effective titles and keywords. 

You can add titles and keywords to your files in the Contributor portal. Or, if you’ve added titles and keywords using Premiere Pro or Adobe Bridge, Adobe Stock will preserve them. You can always edit that metadata before submitting your content. You can also choose to submit a CSV file containing the relevant metadata. Learn more

One of the main things to know is that we can’t accept videos that contain logos, names of companies, brands, artists, real known people, fictional characters, or reference to creative works that are still in copyright. Please see HERE for additional information (add hyperlink to new content policy page)

Don't use trademarked names (e.g., Porsche or Ferrari), camera specifications (e.g., Nikon or 4K), or types of content (e.g., video) as keywords or in your title. Please see HERE for additional information.

If the clip uses a special technique or camera angle for the shot (e.g., zoom, timelapse, or aerial), be sure to include it in the title and the keywords. For a detailed list of video technique and camera angle keywords, see our metadata guide. 

Learn more about titles and keywords. 

Know the legal basics. 

Adobe Stock content needs to comply with all laws around copyright, trademarks, privacy rights, property rights, and more. Review the Legal guidelines section of this user guide to make sure you understand key legal terms and know when you need to include a model release and/or property release with your submission.  

One of the key things to know is that we can’t accept videos that contain logos, trademarks, company names, or brand names. — although you may be able to submit work in which these things have been digitally removed.  

Videos made with generative AI: 

• Make sure your submission meets all Generative AI requirements.
• Ensure the video meets high-quality production standards with no artifacts, distortion, or inconsistencies.  
  

• Submit videos with a minimum resolution of 1080 pixels on both sides (horizontal: 1920x1080, vertical: 1080x1920).

• Submit video clips that are between 5 and 60 seconds.

Be careful not to spam.  

Select only your best footage and ensure that each submission offers something different. Don’t submit multiple clips with minimal changes in angle or depth, or copies of the same footage with different post-production effects applied. Submitting multiple copies of similar or identical content can be perceived as spam by our moderation team, and submitting multiple versions of videos created with the same prompt will be treated as spam. Using long, non-descriptive, repetitive, or irrelevant titles and keywords can be perceived as spam as well. Spamming is strictly prohibited and may prompt us to block your account or close it permanently. Learn more