FAQ
Cloudflare decides on which bitrate, resolution, and codec is best for you. We deliver all videos to industry standard H264 codec. We use a few different adaptive streaming levels from 360p to 1080p to ensure smooth streaming for your audience watching on different devices and bandwidth constraints.
You cannot download the exact input file that you uploaded. However, depending on your use case, you can use the Downloadable Videos feature to get encoded MP4s for use cases like offline viewing.
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By default, a video upload can be at most 30 GB.
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By default, you can have up to 120 videos queued or being encoded simultaneously. Videos in the
readystatus are playable but may still be encoding certain quality levels until thepctCompletereaches 100. Videos in theerror,ready, orpendinguploadstate do not count toward this limit. If you need the concurrency limit raised, contact Cloudflare support explaining your use case and why you would like the limit raised.
- An account cannot upload videos if the total video duration exceeds the video storage capacity purchased.
Limits apply to Direct Creator Uploads at the time of upload URL creation.
Uploads over these limits will receive a 429 (Too Many Requests) or 413 (Payload too large) HTTP status codes with more information in the response body. Please write to Cloudflare support or your customer success manager for higher limits.
Yes. Stream videos can be embedded on any domain, even domains not on Cloudflare.
Users can upload video in the following file formats:
MP4, MKV, MOV, AVI, FLV, MPEG-2 TS, MPEG-2 PS, MXF, LXF, GXF, 3GP, WebM, MPG, QuickTime
When HDR videos are uploaded to Stream, they are re-encoded and delivered in SDR format, to ensure compatibility with the widest range of viewing devices.
Cloudflare Stream supports video file uploads for any FPS, however videos will be re-encoded for 70 FPS playback. If the original video file has a frame rate lower than 70 FPS, Stream will re-encode at the original frame rate.
If the frame rate is variable we will drop frames (e.g. if there are more than 1 frames within 1/30 seconds, we will drop the extra frames within that period).
You can embed the Stream player on the following platforms:
| Browser | Version |
|---|---|
| Chrome | Supported since Chrome version 88+ |
| Firefox | Supported since Firefox version 87+ |
| Edge | Supported since Edge 89+ |
| Safari | Supported since Safari version 14+ |
| Opera | Supported since Opera version 75+ |
| Mobile Platform | Version |
|---|---|
| Chrome on Android | Supported on Chrome 90 |
| UC Browser on Android | Supported on version 12.12+ |
| Samsung Internet | Supported on 13+ |
| Safari on iOS | Supported on iOS 13.4+. Speed selector supported when not in fullscreen. |
If you are producing a brand new file for Cloudflare Stream, we recommend you use the following settings:
- MP4 containers, AAC audio codec, H264 video codec, 30 or below frames per second
- moov atom should be at the front of the file (Fast Start)
- H264 progressive scan (no interlacing)
- H264 high profile
- Closed GOP
- Content should be encoded and uploaded in the same frame rate it was recorded
- Mono or Stereo audio (Stream will mix audio tracks with more than 2 channels down to stereo)
Below are bitrate recommendations for encoding new videos for Stream:
| Resolution | Recommended bitrate |
|---|---|
| 1080p | 8 Mbps |
| 720p | 4.8 Mbps |
| 480p | 2.4 Mbps |
| 360p | 1 Mbps |
Videos are removed if the subscription is not renewed within 30 days.
I use Content Security Policy (CSP) on my website. What domains do I need to add to which directives?
If your website uses Content Security Policy (CSP) directives, depending on your configuration, you may need to add Cloudflare Stream's domains to particular directives, in order to allow videos to be viewed or uploaded by your users.
If you use the provided Stream Player, videodelivery.net and *.cloudflarestream.com must be included in the frame-src or default-src directive to allow the player's <iframe> element to load.
Content-Security-Policy: frame-src 'self' videodelivery.net *.cloudflarestream.comIf you use your own Player, add *.videodelivery.net and *.cloudflarestream.com to the media-src, img-src and connect-src CSP directives to allow video files and thumbnail images to load.
Content-Security-Policy: media-src 'self' videodelivery.net *.cloudflarestream.com; img-src 'self' *.videodelivery.net *.cloudflarestream.com; connect-src 'self' *.videodelivery.net *.cloudflarestream.comIf you allow users to upload their own videos directly to Cloudflare Stream, add *.videodelivery.net and *.cloudflarestream.com to the connect-src CSP directive.
Content-Security-Policy: connect-src 'self' *.videodelivery.net *.cloudflarestream.comTo ensure only videos from your Cloudflare Stream account can be played on your website, replace * in *.cloudflarestream.com and *.videodelivery.net in the examples above with customer-<CODE>, replacing <CODE> with your unique customer code, which can be found in the Stream Dashboard ↗. This code is unique to your Cloudflare Account.
If your website loads in a lot of player instances, PageSpeed Insights will penalize the JavaScript load for each player instance. Our testing shows that when actually loading the page, the script itself is only downloaded once with the local browser cache retrieving the script for the other player objects on the same page. Therefore, we believe that the PageSpeed Insights score is not matching real-world behavior in this situation.
If you are using thumbnails, you can use animated thumbnails that link to the video pages.
If multiple players are on the same page, you can lazy load any players that are not visible in the initial viewport. For more information about lazy loading, refer to Mozilla's lazy loading documentation ↗.