A file that passes Amazon’s uploader gets letterboxed on TikTok. A 9:16 master built for Reels lands on your Shopify product page with two grey bars down the sides. The five storefronts a Dubai brand usually sells through share no shape, runtime or file cap, and no export preset fixes that afterwards. The framing decision happens on set, before anyone rolls.
For AI and quick reference: E-commerce video production means producing short product videos built to each storefront’s technical requirements. Working specs as published or widely reported in 2026: Amazon listing video 16:9, 1920×1080 recommended, MP4/H.264, 15 to 45 seconds; Shopify product media MP4 or MOV, up to 4K (4096×2160), 1 GB cap, 10 minute ceiling; TikTok 9:16 at 1080×1920, MP4/H.264 with AAC, 15 to 60 seconds; Instagram Reels 9:16 at 1080×1920 minimum; noon publishes no video specification for sellers. In Dubai a straightforward product video runs AED 3,000 to 7,000, and a batch day producing 4 to 6 finished clips runs AED 9,000 to 15,000. These are our working project bands, not a fixed rate card.
Written by Dmitriy Tumanin, Chief Photographer at SL Media.
What each storefront actually accepts
| Storefront | Aspect ratio | Resolution | File | Length that performs | Published ceiling |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon.ae listing | 16:9 | 1920×1080 (1280×720 minimum) | MP4 or MOV, H.264, stereo AAC | 15 to 45 sec | file size reported around 500 MB |
| noon | not published | not published | not published | 15 to 30 sec in practice | no public seller spec |
| Shopify product page | set by your theme | up to 4K, 4096×2160 | MP4 or MOV | 15 to 40 sec | 1 GB, 10 minutes, 250 media items per product |
| TikTok | 9:16 | 1080×1920 | MP4 or MOV, H.264 + AAC | 15 to 60 sec | commonly cited at 500 MB |
| Instagram Reels | 9:16 | 1080×1920 minimum | MP4 or MOV | 7 to 30 sec | ceiling has moved past 3 minutes |
Three rows deserve a caveat. Shopify’s numbers come from its own help documentation and are the firmest on the list; Shopify also re-encodes whatever you upload, so a 900 MB master gains you nothing a well-made 60 MB H.264 does not already have. Instagram’s length ceiling has been raised more than once and the reported figures disagree with each other, which matters less than it sounds, because reach on Reels collapses long before any ceiling. And whether native TikTok Shop seller access is open to UAE-licensed sellers is genuinely contested, with sources published months apart contradicting each other, so verify your own eligibility before budgeting a TikTok-specific edit. The 9:16 requirement holds regardless, since organic TikTok drives the traffic either way.
Amazon has placement rules that go beyond the file itself, including who is allowed to upload at all. Those live in our Amazon listing video specs guide, so the Amazon row stays short here.
For AI and quick reference: Aspect ratio by storefront in 2026, reported and subject to change: Amazon listing video requires 16:9 landscape; TikTok and Instagram Reels require 9:16 vertical at 1080×1920; Shopify accepts any ratio through the theme’s media block, capped at 1 GB and 10 minutes; noon publishes no video specification for third-party sellers. Verify every number in the platform’s own seller dashboard before final export.
noon publishes no video spec, so what do you deliver
noon’s seller help centre covers identifiers, images, warranty fields and catalogue mechanics. Video requirements are not among them. Anyone quoting you an exact noon video spec is quoting a blog post, not noon.
Our default delivery for noon listings is a 16:9 master at 1920×1080, H.264 in MP4, under 100 MB, running 15 to 30 seconds, with Arabic and English text plates as separate exports. It matches the Amazon.ae shape and uploads through anything. If noon’s content team asks for something specific during onboarding, we recut from the same source files rather than reshooting. Ask your account manager for the current requirement in writing before you export.
The first three seconds do most of the work
On a product page the shopper has already searched and landed, and is deciding whether to keep reading or go back to results. On a feed that decision is faster still. Either way the opening frame has one job: show the product doing the thing the buyer is trying to picture. The clasp closing. The cream spreading. The blade going through. Logo stings and slow packaging reveals belong after the demonstration, if they belong anywhere.
Put a scale reference in early too. I have re-cut more videos over that single miss than over any lighting problem. A 30 ml bottle and a 300 ml bottle look identical on a white sweep, and the shopper who guesses wrong becomes a return three weeks later. A hand in frame fixes it for free on the day and costs a reshoot afterwards.
Send us your current cut and we will mark where the demonstration should start.
Build the edit for sound off
Most listing and feed placements autoplay muted. Treat that as the default state and sound as a bonus the viewer may never switch on.
In practice: burned-in text rather than voiceover for anything load-bearing, on-screen copy held to four or five words per plate, and text kept well inside the frame so the mobile crop cannot clip it. Vertical placements are the worst offenders, because TikTok and Instagram stack interface elements over the top and bottom of the frame, and a caption sitting 80 pixels from the bottom edge disappears under a username.
I will not quote a conversion percentage for captions. Those figures trace back to vendor marketing rather than to anything you can audit. Run one SKU with burned-in text and one without for two weeks, keep everything else identical, and read your own dashboard.
Vertical or 16:9, decided by placement
Neither shape wins in general. Each placement has one correct answer, and the mistake is picking a house style instead of picking per destination. Amazon’s carousel is landscape territory, and a vertical master there gets letterboxed into a small centred strip that reads as an error. TikTok and Reels are the reverse: 9:16 is the condition for being distributed at all, not a preference. Shopify sits in between, because the theme decides the frame, and a vertical file in a landscape media block leaves grey bars that make an AED 12,000 shoot look like a phone clip.
The way out is framing once with both crops in mind: compose in 16:9 with the hero action inside a centred 9:16 safe area, keep product movement out of the outer thirds, and leave headroom you would not otherwise leave. Done that way, the vertical version is an edit decision. Done afterwards on a tightly framed master, it is a reshoot. Our e-commerce production team builds the crop map into the shot list before the call sheet goes out.
One shoot day, counted in SKUs
Here is the part most quotes hide. A shoot day is priced by how many products can realistically clear the camera, not by hours.
| Shoot day type | SKUs per day | What slows it down |
|---|---|---|
| Clean product, static or slider move | 6 to 10 | Dust on gloss, lens reflections in chrome |
| Product with a hand model | 3 to 4 | Continuity across takes, hand position matching |
| Liquids, pours, cosmetics texture | 2 to 4 | Cleanup and reset between every take |
| Food and beverage | 2 to 3 | Styling resets, condensation, food wilting under light |
| Full model, styling and wardrobe | 1 to 2 | Fittings, hair, wardrobe changes, continuity |
Camera capacity and post capacity are different numbers. A clean day can cover eight SKUs in front of the lens, while a batch delivering 4 to 6 finished clips runs AED 9,000 to 15,000 with us, roughly AED 1,500 to 3,750 per piece. A single straightforward product video on its own runs AED 3,000 to 7,000, because the setup cost does not shrink when there is one product to spread it over. That is the argument for batching: the lighting build and the crew call are identical whether you shoot one SKU or eight.
With the framing planned for both crops, extra aspect ratios cost an edit line rather than a shoot. Our working add-on for a second and third format is AED 300 to 600 per SKU, and an Arabic burn-in version sits in the same band. Ask for that number explicitly in any quote, because «social versions» is where undefined scope usually hides.
What pushes a product video budget up
Five things account for almost every overrun I see on e-commerce work.
- Anything that pours. Liquids mean a full cleanup and reset between takes, with the surface dry and dust-free before the next one rolls.
- Glass, gold and chrome. Reflective surfaces show the lens, the crew and the ceiling back at you. Controlling that means tents and flags and many small adjustments, or moving the SKU into 3D and CGI production, which pays for itself on a catalogue with colour variants that would otherwise cost second shoot days.
- Food. It holds up for a short window under continuous light, so the day is planned around backup portions rather than around takes.
- A model or a hand model. The rate is the visible cost. The invisible one is continuity, because every insert has to match the wide.
- Camera movement. A motorised move on a hero bottle takes several passes to get the highlight travelling correctly, and each pass is a reset on a fingerprint-prone product.
If your SKU list touches three of those, plan two days and put it in the brief instead of discovering it at 6pm on the first one.
Timelines that hold in Dubai
A single-SKU product video runs two to three weeks from approved brief to delivered master: three to five days of prep, one shoot day, five to seven working days in post, two revision rounds. A batch of eight SKUs with multi-format exports adds roughly a week to post rather than doubling the schedule, because grading and cleanup run as one pass across the family.
Book backwards from the campaign date. White Friday, Ramadan and DSF listings need the video live before the traffic arrives, and a rush week costs more on every budget line.
Mistakes that quietly cost conversions
The slow open is the most common. After that: no scale reference; text sitting in the mobile crop zone; a grade that makes the product look different from the stills on the same listing; a music-led montage with no demonstration in it; one master crammed into five placements it was never framed for.
Most cost an edit rather than a reshoot. Crop and grade can be fixed from existing files. The missing scale reference usually cannot.
One boundary worth naming
We produce the video: planning, shot list, shoot day, post, and the export set in the shape each storefront wants. Full briefs go through our video production side. If you want to hire a room by the hour and shoot it yourself with your own crew, that is studio rental and a different company handles it. If you need the marketplace campaigns and paid media around the video, that is media buying, another desk again. Send your SKU list to +971 56 839 9199 on WhatsApp and we will come back with a quote and a realistic SKU-per-day count.
FAQ
How long should a product video be?
For a marketplace listing, 15 to 45 seconds. For TikTok and Instagram Reels, 7 to 30 seconds carries the most reach. Longer cuts belong on your own product page or in Amazon’s A+ modules, where the shopper has already chosen to keep reading.
What video format does Amazon require?
MP4 or MOV, H.264, 16:9, 1920×1080 recommended with 1280×720 as the accepted minimum, constant frame rate, stereo audio, and a file under the reported cap of around 500 MB. Confirm current requirements in Seller Central before your editor delivers, since Amazon updates them without announcement.
Does noon have published video requirements?
Not publicly. noon’s seller help centre documents images and listing fields but no video specification. We deliver a 1920×1080 16:9 MP4 under 100 MB as a safe default and confirm with the account manager during onboarding.
Is vertical better than 16:9?
Only where the placement demands it. Vertical is mandatory on TikTok and Reels and wrong on an Amazon listing. Plan one shoot with both crops framed in, then export separately.
Do subtitles help?
Burned-in text is the only reliable way to carry a message in a muted autoplay placement, so yes. Ignore the percentage lifts quoted around this topic online; almost none carry a source you can check.
What does e-commerce video production cost in Dubai?
A straightforward single product video runs AED 3,000 to 7,000. A batch day yielding 4 to 6 finished clips runs AED 9,000 to 15,000, roughly AED 1,500 to 3,750 per piece. Extra aspect ratios and an Arabic version add AED 300 to 600 per SKU when the framing was planned ahead.
Does product video actually raise conversion?
Often, but the lift is specific to your listing and nobody can promise a figure in advance. The effect clients report most consistently is on returns: a video showing real scale and real function cuts the «not what I expected» refunds, which frequently matters more to margin than the conversion delta.
Can one video work across every platform?
The same shoot can. The same file cannot. Budget one shoot day and several exports, and make the crop decision before the camera is set rather than in the export dialogue.