DaVinci Resolve Export Settings for TikTok: Exact Numbers

Should you use the built-in preset, or build custom export settings?

Depends on what you're exporting and how much control you need over the final bitrate. The built-in preset is fast, it's native, and its direct-upload option skips the file-transfer step of exporting, opening a phone or the web uploader, and uploading manually. That's real time saved on a channel posting daily.

It has two real limits. First, no exposed bitrate field, since Encoding Profile is set to Auto and there's nothing in the preset panel to override it with a specific kbps target. Second, the direct-upload fields, Title, Visible To, Allow Comments, Allow Duet, Allow Stitch, cover the basics but not everything the TikTok app itself offers, like sounds, effects, or scheduled publishing.

The custom path is exactly what the rest of this guide walks through: Format MP4, Codec H.264, resolution and frame rate set manually, and a bitrate typed into the Restrict To field instead of left on Auto. Both paths produce a file that plays back identically once TikTok finishes re-encoding it, so this is a workflow choice, not a quality one, except at the specific bitrate ceiling where Auto's internal decision and your manual number might diverge.

Should you build a vertical timeline, or reframe a horizontal one at export?

Build vertical from the start, every time. This has nothing to do with which preset you use. A 16:9 timeline exported at a 9:16 resolution, whether through the TikTok preset or a custom export, doesn't get intelligently reframed; it either squeezes everything into a tall, distorted sliver or crops the sides off blind, keeping whatever happened to sit in the center of your original composition.

The right sequence: duplicate or create your timeline, open Timeline Settings, and change the resolution to 1080x1920, ticking Use Custom Settings if you're starting fresh. Then work shot by shot with the Transform controls in the Inspector, punching in and repositioning so faces, hands, and any burned-in text land inside the tall frame instead of getting sliced off. It takes longer than a blanket crop at export time, and it's the only version that reads as intentional instead of accidental once it's on a phone screen.

A vertical timeline built at 1080x1920 from the start survives TikTok's re-encode better than a horizontal timeline squeezed or cropped into shape afterward. A crop throws away resolution outside the crop box before the encoder ever touches the footage, which means you're handing TikTok's compressor a softer source than a properly reframed shot would have produced. The gap shows up most in fine detail: text, faces at a distance, anything with sharp edges.

Studio owners get a real shortcut here. Smart Reframe uses the Neural Engine to auto-track a subject and generate the punch-in and pan automatically, genuinely useful on run-and-gun footage with a moving subject. It's still worth a manual pass on two-person shots, wide two-shots, or anything with on-screen text, since an AI reframe tuned to "keep the face in frame" doesn't know your caption needs room too. Free-version editors do this by hand with keyframed Transform values, slower per shot but producing an identical file once the keyframes are placed, since Smart Reframe accelerates the workflow rather than changing what gets exported.

If you're working with a Fusion composite or layered graphics that need to reframe together rather than shot by shot, the Fusion page's transform and crop tools give more precise control than the Edit page Inspector. For a straightforward talking-head or b-roll cut, Edit-page Transform covers it completely.

What resolution should you actually export at for TikTok?

1080x1920 for almost everyone, but the honest range is wider than that single number suggests once you look at what TikTok's own documentation actually specifies across its different upload paths.

For a regular organic post, 1080x1920 at 9:16 is the de facto standard, matching what fills a phone screen full-bleed with no letterboxing. TikTok's own consumer help pages don't publish this figure as an explicit pixel spec the way YouTube does for its uploads, which is exactly why Resolve's own TikTok preset lists its resolution as 1920x1080 HD and relies on the Use Vertical Resolution checkbox to flip it into the portrait shape everyone actually means by "1080x1920."

For a TikTok ad through Ads Manager, the documented minimum is 540x960px for the recommended vertical format, per TikTok's own video ads specifications. That's a floor, not a target; it's the smallest file Ads Manager will accept, roughly a quarter the pixel count of 1080x1920. TopView ads carry the identical minimum, per TikTok's TopView ad specifications.

If you're exporting through TikTok's Content Posting API, the route used by scheduling and automation tools rather than the app or Resolve's own preset, the bounds are wider and stricter at the same time: a minimum of 360 pixels and a maximum of 4096 pixels for both height and width, according to TikTok's Content Posting API media transfer guide. That 4096px ceiling matters if you're delivering a high-resolution vertical master, something like 2160x3840, through an automated pipeline; stay under it or the upload gets rejected outright.

TikTok's own Ads Manager will approve a video at 540x960, a quarter the pixel count of the resolution nearly every creator actually exports at. That gap between the documented minimum and the practical standard is the single most common source of confusion in TikTok export advice, since some guides quote the floor as if it were the recommendation.

Whichever number you land on, keep the aspect ratio at exactly 9:16. TikTok also technically accepts 1:1 and 16:9, per TikTok's video ads specifications, but neither fills the vertical, scroll-driven feed the way 9:16 does, and both play with visible letterboxing in the main For You feed.

What bitrate should you use for a TikTok export?

Here's the honest answer nobody selling a definitive TikTok settings sheet wants to give you: TikTok's own consumer-facing help pages don't publish a target bitrate at all, only a floor for ads. Ads Manager's documented minimum is 516 kbps, per TikTok's own video ads specifications, and TopView's floor is higher at 2,500 kbps, per TikTok's TopView ad specifications. Neither number tells you what actually looks good; they tell you the least TikTok will accept before an ad fails technical review.

TikTok doesn't publish a single official bitrate table the way YouTube does, so every "optimal TikTok bitrate" number circulating online is someone's extrapolation, not a platform requirement. That's exactly why bitrate advice for this platform ranges so widely, from barely-there ad-approval floors up past 20 Mbps in some creator workflows, with nothing official sitting in the middle to anchor the conversation.

In the absence of an official target, look at what a working editor actually posts publicly about his own settings. Daniel Grindrod, a video editor sharing his workflow, posted his personal TikTok export settings directly: "For the format I use H.264 My frame size is 1080 X 1920 to match the sequence... I use VRB 2-Pass with a target bit rate of 20 Mbps and a maximum bit rate of 24 Mbps as I often use a variety of different clips in my videos," in a TikTok post about his own export process. That's noticeably higher than most generic advice floating around, and he gives the reason himself: mixed-source footage from a variety of clips needs more headroom to encode cleanly than a single consistent camera source does.

Since there's no published ceiling for organic content, you can't meaningfully overshoot a TikTok bitrate the way you can waste render time overshooting a platform with a hard published number. TikTok re-encodes whatever you send regardless, so the practical risk sits almost entirely on the low side. If you're deciding between two numbers in the table above and genuinely unsure, pick the higher one; it costs you render time and upload time, not quality.

Should you export H.264 or H.265 from DaVinci Resolve for TikTok?

H.264 for anything going through the TikTok app, TikTok Studio, or Resolve's own TikTok preset. That covers the overwhelming majority of what anyone reading this guide is actually doing. Resolve's built-in preset sets Video Codec to H.264 automatically and doesn't expose an H.265 option in that panel at all, per Blackmagic's manual, which is itself a strong signal about which codec TikTok's consumer upload paths are built around.

Where it gets interesting is TikTok's Content Posting API, the developer-facing route third-party scheduling and automation tools use to publish on a creator's behalf. That documentation lists "H.264 (recommended), H.265, VP8, VP9" as accepted video codecs, per TikTok's own Content Posting API media transfer guide. H.264 still gets top billing as the recommendation, but H.265 is explicitly documented as accepted there, which puts TikTok in a different position than Instagram, where H.265 isn't reliably accepted through any upload path.

This matters more than it sounds like it should, because plenty of recent iPhones record video in HEVC (H.265) by default to save storage. If your camera source is already H.265 before it ever touches Resolve, that's not a problem the timeline itself has to solve; Resolve transcodes whatever you import during editing and grading regardless. What matters is the codec you explicitly select on the Deliver page: confirm it reads H.264, not a default that quietly carried H.265 through from an unrelated preset built for something else.

Resolve's own TikTok preset locks in H.264 with no H.265 option exposed, which tells you exactly which codec the platform's consumer-facing upload paths are actually built around. If you're building a custom export instead of using the preset, match that choice rather than reaching for H.265 on the theory that a more efficient codec must be a better one; efficiency only helps if the destination actually decodes it cleanly, and TikTok's own app-facing pipeline isn't built to reward that trade the way an HDR-specific delivery might.

What frame rate should you export at for TikTok?

Whatever your timeline actually is, matched exactly, the same rule that governs every export in Resolve regardless of platform. Resolve's own TikTok preset defaults to "the chosen frame rate of your timeline," with a manual override available if you need one, per Blackmagic's manual. That default is the correct choice for almost every export; leave it alone unless you have a specific reason to change it.

TikTok's Content Posting API documents hard bounds here too: a minimum of 23fps and a maximum of 60fps, per TikTok's own API documentation. Those numbers cover essentially every standard delivery frame rate a camera or timeline would realistically use, so this bound rarely becomes a practical constraint; it mostly rules out unusual, very-low-frame-rate exports rather than anything a normal edit would produce.

The mismatch that actually costs you isn't picking 24 versus 30fps; it's exporting at a rate that doesn't match what you shot and cut at. Film and edit at 24fps, export at 24fps. Force a 24fps timeline out at 30fps and Resolve has to invent or duplicate frames to fill the gap, which shows up as a faint, hard-to-name judder in motion, the same problem that plagues mismatched exports on every platform covered on this site.

Where frame rate does matter specifically for TikTok content: fast motion, dance routines, sports clips, and anything with quick whip pans benefits from 60fps if that's what you actually captured, since TikTok's compression handles motion better with more source frames to work from. A static talking-head video gains nothing from 60fps beyond a bigger file rendering the same visual result.

Before you render, open your timeline settings and compare the frame rate against your Deliver page render settings, whether you're using the built-in preset or a custom export. It's a fifteen-second check that catches the single most common invisible export mistake before it becomes a re-upload.

Do you need to worry about safe zones when editing for TikTok?

Yes, and TikTok's own official help pages make this harder than it should be, because the exact pixel numbers live inside downloadable safe-zone template files rather than in the text of the specification pages themselves. TikTok's own TopView ad specifications page tells advertisers to "ensure that the key elements such as text and logos are within the safe zone" and points to "downloadable .zip files" rather than stating a number outright, per that official spec page. The in-feed ad specifications page says the same thing in different words: safe zone size "is determined by the dimension, ad caption length, and any additional formats used," per TikTok's video ads specifications.

That leaves practitioners to measure and report the practical numbers themselves. A widely cited breakdown of TikTok's ad safe zones puts the top margin at roughly 120-130px and the bottom margin at roughly 300-320px clear of text and logos on a standard 1080x1920 frame, with about 120px clear on the right and 60px on the left, according to Recharm's safe zone guide. Those numbers are scaled approximations reverse-engineered from TikTok's own template files and the visible interface, not text copied from an official spec sheet, which is worth knowing before you treat them as gospel accurate to the pixel.

The bottom margin is the one that costs people the most, because TikTok's own interface stacks a lot on top of the frame there: the caption text, the username, the sound attribution ticker, and the full column of action buttons, like, comment, share, bookmark, more. A CTA or logo placed at the very bottom of your frame is nearly guaranteed to sit under at least one of those elements on a real device.

DaVinci Resolve has a built-in Safe Area overlay you can enable from the Viewer Overlay button: Extents, Action (90% of frame), Title (80% of frame), and Center crosshairs, per Blackmagic's own manual. Be clear-eyed about what that overlay actually is: a generic broadcast-television convention, not a number calibrated to TikTok's specific interface. Turning it on gives you a rough visual guide while editing, but it won't match TikTok's actual margins closely enough to trust blindly, especially in the bottom third where the action button column eats more than a standard 90% action-safe frame assumes. Treat it as a starting reference, then check your final composition against the practical percentages above.

The practical workflow: keep your main subject and any burned-in text centered in roughly the middle 55-60% of the vertical frame, add captions no lower than about 80% down the frame, and preview your final export on an actual phone in the TikTok app before calling the job done. A desktop preview, even full-screen, doesn't reproduce TikTok's real interface overlap.

How long can a TikTok video actually be, and how long should yours be?

Depends entirely on which upload path you're using, and this is where TikTok's numbers get genuinely confusing, because the platform has raised its duration limits in tiers over time and different upload paths inherited different ceilings.

TikTok's own Content Posting API documentation states it plainly: "3-minute videos are available to all creators," while "some users can access 5-minute or 10-minute videos," with 10 minutes as the API's own documented maximum for developer-posted content, per TikTok's Content Posting API media transfer guide. That's a tiered system, not a single number, and which tier your account sits in isn't something you control from inside Resolve.

TikTok Studio, the web-based uploader, carries a more generous ceiling for imported files specifically: uploads up to 30 minutes long, under 10 GB, in MP4 or WebM, per a summary of TikTok Studio's current upload guidance. That gap between a 3-to-10-minute organic tier and a 30-minute Studio ceiling exists because Studio's web uploader is built for importing pre-produced longer-form content, not for the short-form recording flow the mobile app defaults to.

Ads run on a separate clock entirely. Non-Spark ads through Ads Manager cap at 10 minutes, matching the API's outer limit, per TikTok's video ads specifications. Spark Ads, which boost an existing organic post rather than uploading new creative, carry "No restrictions" on duration, per the same official spec page, since they're just amplifying a video that already passed through organic posting rules. TopView sits at the opposite extreme: 5 to 60 seconds, with 9 to 15 seconds specifically recommended, per TikTok's TopView ad specifications, because it's a full-screen takeover format designed to be seen once, briefly, the moment someone opens the app.

None of this changes your Resolve export settings directly, only your timeline planning. If you're building toward a longer-form upload through TikTok Studio, keep pacing tight anyway; a 20-minute video with a slow first 15 seconds loses viewers before the algorithm even has a signal to work with. For everything shorter, the practical sweet spot most creators land on sits well under any of these ceilings, somewhere between 15 and 60 seconds, long before duration becomes the limiting factor at all.

What audio settings does TikTok actually want?

AAC, with a bitrate scaled to quality needs rather than one fixed universal number, since TikTok's official documentation is thinner here than its video specifications. Resolve's own built-in TikTok preset routes audio through "Bus 1" with the codec set to AAC automatically, per Blackmagic's manual, confirming AAC as the codec the platform's own consumer pipeline expects.

On a custom export, that's the Deliver page's Audio tab: Codec set to AAC, Bitrate somewhere between 128 and 192 kbps, sample rate at 44.1kHz or 48kHz, and Output Track pointed at your finished stereo mix, not an isolated dialogue or music stem. The single most commonly missed setting on this entire page is the Export Audio checkbox at the top of the tab; it's on by default, but it's also the first thing that gets unchecked accidentally while troubleshooting something unrelated. A silent TikTok upload is a far worse outcome than a slightly conservative bitrate, and it's exactly the kind of mistake that's invisible until someone actually watches with sound on. If your export comes out silent, our no audio troubleshooting guide runs the deeper checklist beyond this single checkbox.

Loudness deserves its own mention, even though it isn't a codec-level field. TikTok doesn't publish a clear, singular official LUFS target the way podcast platforms do, and independent listening reports on TikTok's playback behavior are genuinely mixed, some measuring it closer to the -14 LUFS figure common across web video, others noting TikTok's in-feed playback doesn't apply the same consistent normalization pass that YouTube or Spotify does. Given that uncertainty, the safest bet is mixing toward the same -14 LUFS integrated figure that's become the de facto web video standard, since a mix with reasonable headroom survives inconsistent platform-side handling better than one already pushed to the ceiling. Our loudness normalization guide covers exactly how to set and hit that target on the Fairlight page.

One TikTok-specific audio habit worth building deliberately: a large share of TikTok gets watched with sound off, especially in the first second while someone decides whether to keep scrolling. Burn in captions or key dialogue as on-screen text wherever the content depends on what's actually being said, independent of whatever audio codec and bitrate you've correctly dialed in on the Deliver page. Daniel Grindrod's own posted workflow makes the same point in his final line: "Finally, I make sure to burn in the captions that I've added," in his TikTok post about his export process. That's a small habit that costs almost nothing at export time and matters every time someone watches without headphones in.

Does your color grade survive TikTok's compression?

Mostly, if you set it up correctly before you ever hit render. The two places a careful grade falls apart on the way to TikTok are gamma tagging and bitrate starvation, and only one of those is something Resolve's export settings fix directly.

Gamma tagging is the sneakier of the two, and it's a mistake that carries across every social platform, not just this one. Editor Mark Ledbetter's export guidance is direct on the point: "Use Rec.709, not Rec.709-A. The latter may cause washed-out results," in his export settings writeup. Rec.709-A exists specifically to tell macOS playback software to interpret a file at gamma 2.4 instead of 2.2, which can help a file look correct in QuickTime Player on a Mac. TikTok's own mobile playback pipeline isn't that specific viewer, and tagging for one player's quirk can shift how your grade reads once it's re-encoded and displayed across a mix of Android and iOS devices. When in doubt, export standard Rec.709 rather than Rec.709-A for a TikTok deliverable.

Bitrate starvation is the other half, and it's the same physics covered in the bitrate section earlier: gradients in skies, fog, and dark backgrounds are the first place a low bitrate shows visible banding, because those regions are long runs of nearly identical values that a starved encoder can't afford to preserve precisely. A heavily graded, moody piece with lifted shadows and a strong color look is exactly the content that needs the top of the bitrate range covered earlier, not the bottom, and it's part of why Daniel Grindrod's own workflow leans toward 20-24 Mbps rather than the lower end most generic advice suggests.

A TikTok upload isn't the file viewers watch; the platform re-encodes what you send, the same way YouTube and Instagram re-encode every video they receive. Your export is a source file for TikTok's own compression pass, not the final image a viewer sees. Handing it a soft, low-bitrate, or incorrectly tagged file doesn't just look slightly worse today; it gives TikTok's encoder a worse starting point to compress from, and there's no recovering detail that never made it into the upload in the first place.

One honest caveat about HDR: TikTok doesn't currently have a documented HDR delivery path the way YouTube does with its Rec.2020 PQ/HLG requirements, and neither Resolve's built-in TikTok preset nor TikTok's own ad specification pages mention HDR metadata at all. If you're grading HDR footage for TikTok, deliver an SDR trim rather than assuming the platform's pipeline handles HDR metadata the way YouTube's does; our HDR grading guide covers building that SDR trim from an HDR master without regrading from scratch.

How does exporting for a TikTok ad differ from a regular TikTok upload?

More than most creators expect, and this is worth a dedicated pass because treating an ad export identically to an organic upload is the single most common way a paid campaign launches with a file that technically clears review but looks weaker than it needed to.

The built-in TikTok preset in Resolve is built for organic, direct-to-account posting. It isn't the path for ads at all; Ads Manager campaigns require uploading a rendered file directly into TikTok's ad platform, not through Resolve's direct-upload checkbox. That means ad work always runs through the custom export path covered throughout this guide, never the one-click preset.

Spark Ads deserve a specific mention because they invert the usual ads-are-stricter logic. A Spark Ad boosts an organic post that's already live on your account rather than uploading fresh creative, and TikTok's own specification confirms duration carries "No restrictions" for that format, per TikTok's video ads specifications. If a piece of organic content performs well and you want to put ad spend behind it, that content's export settings are already locked in; there's nothing further to adjust in Resolve.

The bigger practical difference for a non-Spark or TopView campaign is planning your master resolution and bitrate with the higher-stakes destination in mind from the start. If there's any real chance an organic-style piece gets pushed into a paid TopView slot, export at the top of the bitrate range covered earlier and at full 1080x1920, rather than the documented floor. Building a strong master and letting Ads Manager's own pipeline compress down is a much better trade than discovering after the fact that a floor-spec export doesn't hold up in a premium, full-screen placement.

Does the free version of DaVinci Resolve limit TikTok exports?

Barely, and less than it limits any other export type covered on this site. Per Blackmagic's own tech specs, the free version renders up to Ultra HD 3840x2160 at 60fps in 8-bit color. Every resolution covered in this guide, from the 1080x1920 organic standard down through the 540x960 ad floor and up to the Content Posting API's 4096px ceiling, sits comfortably inside or well below that cap, with room to spare in every direction.

The one genuine Studio trigger for TikTok-specific work is Smart Reframe, the AI tool covered earlier that auto-tracks a subject when converting horizontal footage to vertical. Free-version editors do the identical reframing job by hand with keyframed Transform values on the Edit page; slower per shot, but the exported file is indistinguishable from Smart Reframe's output once the keyframes are placed correctly. If you're reframing dozens of clips a week and the manual process eats real time, that's the actual cost-benefit question Studio's one-time price is answering, not any limitation in TikTok export quality itself.

The other free-version gap, hardware-accelerated encoding on Windows and Linux being Studio-only, matters for render speed rather than output quality. At TikTok's modest 1080p resolution and typically short runtimes, that speed difference is far less painful than it is exporting a full-length 4K YouTube master; a free-version CPU export of a 60-second TikTok video still finishes in a reasonable window on most modern hardware. Our free vs Studio comparison covers the full boundary between the two tiers if you're weighing the upgrade for reasons beyond TikTok work specifically.

What's the fastest way to fix a bad-looking TikTok upload?

Work through these in order before you assume TikTok simply ruined a good export.

• The video is sideways, letterboxed, or has black bars. If you used Resolve's built-in TikTok preset, this is almost always the Use Vertical Resolution checkbox left unticked, since it defaults to off. If you built a custom export, your timeline wasn't actually built at 9:16; check Timeline Settings against your render settings on the Deliver page.
• The video looks cropped or zoomed strangely. Your timeline was 16:9 and got forced into a 9:16 resolution at export instead of being properly reframed shot by shot with the Transform controls.
• Banding or blockiness in skies, shadows, or skin tones. Bitrate is under what the content needs. Check it against the table in the bitrate section above, and move toward the top of the range for anything graded or gradient-heavy.
• The video uploaded but plays back oddly or fails processing. Almost certainly a codec mismatch. Confirm the Deliver page's Codec field reads H.264, especially if your source footage came from a recent iPhone recording HEVC by default and a stray preset carried that setting through.
• Captions, your logo, or a call to action are covered by TikTok's interface. A safe zone miss. Compare your composition against the top and bottom margins covered earlier in this guide, and remember those numbers are practitioner estimates, not official pixel specs, so give yourself extra buffer rather than cutting it exactly to the line.
• Colors look flat or washed out compared to your grade in Resolve. Check whether you exported with Rec.709-A instead of standard Rec.709; that Mac-specific gamma tag can shift how the file reads once TikTok re-encodes and displays it across a mix of devices.
• No audio in the upload. Export Audio was unchecked on the Deliver page's Audio tab. It's the single most common export mistake beginners make across every platform, not just this one. Our no audio troubleshooting guide runs the deeper checklist if it's checked and the file is still silent.
• An ad got rejected during technical review. Check the specific format's documented minimums: 540x960px resolution and 516 kbps bitrate for a standard ad, 2,500 kbps for TopView, and the file size and duration ceilings covered in the ads comparison table earlier.

For hunting down the exact checkbox behind a specific export problem in your own project, that's the gap TryUncle is built for. It's an AI tutor that watches your actual Resolve window and points at the control you're asking about, instead of sending you hunting through a ten-minute video for a setting you needed twenty seconds ago.

How do you save a customized TikTok export preset?

Resolve's built-in TikTok preset already saves you the first setup pass, but it doesn't expose a manual bitrate field, and if you're regularly using a specific number from the table earlier in this guide, rebuilding that by hand every time wastes time you don't need to spend.

1. Start from the built-in TikTok preset to get Format, Codec, and Audio configured correctly in one click, or build the same fields manually: Format MP4, Codec H.264, resolution 1080x1920 with Use Vertical Resolution checked if you're using the preset panel.
2. Set your bitrate explicitly. If you're on the custom export path, type your chosen number from the bitrate table into the Restrict To field under Advanced Settings rather than leaving it on Auto.
3. Set frame rate to match your timeline, and audio to AAC between 128 and 192 kbps.
4. Click the three-dot options menu at the top right of the Render Settings panel.
5. Choose Save As New Preset and name it specifically, something like "TikTok Custom 10Mbps" or "TikTok Ad 1080," not a generic label you'll have to reverse-engineer in six months.
6. The preset appears in the strip alongside Resolve's stock TikTok, YouTube, and Vimeo presets, ready for any project on this machine.

Two presets cover almost every TikTok workflow: the stock built-in one for quick, direct-to-account daily posting, and a custom one with an explicit bitrate for anything graded, ad-bound, or otherwise worth the extra render-time investment. Build both once, and the settings sheet in this guide becomes background knowledge you rarely need to reopen.

Remember that a preset is a snapshot of a spec sheet on the day you built it, and TikTok has changed its own duration tiers and ad specifications before with no advance individual notice. Revisit your saved presets occasionally against TikTok's current ads guide rather than trusting a preset saved once to stay accurate forever.

Which settings should you actually memorize?

A vertical timeline built at 1080x1920 from the start, MP4 with H.264, a bitrate between 8,000 and 12,000 kbps for typical content (higher for mixed-source or heavily graded work), AAC audio at 128-192 kbps, and text kept clear of TikTok's top status bar and bottom caption and button column. That covers a regular organic upload. For ads, remember the documented floors, 540x960px resolution and 516 kbps bitrate for a standard ad, 2,500 kbps for TopView, and treat every one of those numbers as a minimum to clear, not a target to aim for.

Resolve ships a genuine, native TikTok export path with direct upload built in, and the single most important thing to remember about it is that you still have to check Use Vertical Resolution yourself. That one box, unchecked by default in Blackmagic's own preset, causes more sideways, black-barred TikTok exports than any bitrate mistake covered in this entire guide. Check it, verify your codec reads H.264, confirm your bitrate against the table above if you're building custom settings, and preview the final file on an actual phone in the TikTok app before you call the export finished. That last step catches more real problems than any single setting on the Deliver page, because it's the only check that shows you exactly what TikTok's interface does to your frame once your video is live.