Your video should look as good as your brand. Most quality problems happen in three places: recording, upload and cropping. Here's how to avoid them.
When recording
Light: Face the window or lamp, don't stand in front of it. Good light does more than any camera.
Stability: Put the smartphone on a firm surface or use a tripod. Shaky footage can't be fixed later.
Format: Stick to the format the recording request specifies, portrait or landscape.
When uploading
MP4 first: Upload videos as MP4 whenever possible. MOV files, for example from iPhones, occasionally cause display problems. When in doubt, convert them first.
Use the original file: Don't send recordings through a messenger app first. Services like WhatsApp compress videos heavily, and that quality loss is permanent.
Patience with large files: After the upload, cofenster processes the video once. With large files this can take a while; don't close the tab in the middle of an upload.
When cropping and zooming
Crop and zoom enlarge a section of your video. Pixels get lost in the process: the more you zoom in, the softer the image becomes. Use strong zoom sparingly and film important subjects close enough in the first place.
Black bars in your video?
Black bars appear when the footage doesn't match the project's aspect ratio, for example a landscape clip in a 9:16 project. You have two options: crop the clip to fit or place a background behind it. Both are covered in the article "Crop, positioning and zoom".
The preview stutters: is my video broken?
No. The editor preview is optimized for fast editing and can stutter with long projects or many open tabs. The export is not affected and renders in full quality. If it keeps stuttering, the checklist in "The editor freezes or does not load" helps.
Note: If a video still hasn't finished loading or processing after a longer time, message us via the Messenger with the project name. We'll check on our side.