Vertical video
Vertical video is video with a taller-than-wide aspect ratio, almost always 9:16, which fills a phone screen held upright and is the required format for TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and comparable short-form feeds.
Phones are held upright roughly ninety per cent of the time, and every major short-form feed is built on that assumption. Vertical video simply matches the device. A horizontal clip posted into one of these feeds occupies a strip across the middle of the screen and competes badly against anything filling the frame.
The dimensions
- →9:16 is the standard, typically 1080 by 1920 pixels.
- →4:5 is a taller-than-square middle ground that performs well in scrolling feeds.
- →1:1 square still works in some placements but wastes vertical space.
- →16:9 horizontal is for long-form platforms and looks out of place in a short-form feed.
Turning horizontal source into vertical clips
Most source material — podcasts, interviews, streams, conference talks — was shot horizontally. Converting it means deciding what to lose from the sides. Simply centre-cropping often puts the speaker half out of frame, particularly with two people in shot.
The alternatives are to track the active speaker and follow them, or to stack the footage with captions and a background filling the space above and below. Tracking looks better when it works; stacking is more forgiving when there are several people on screen.
What changes about the framing
A vertical frame is unforgiving of wide shots. Faces need to be larger, text needs to be bigger, and anything important has to sit clear of the interface elements that overlay the top and bottom of every feed.
Clipd reframes horizontal source to vertical automatically.
Vertical video best practices