Glossary
What is headroom?
By the KeyMo team · Updated
Headroom is the space between the top of a subject's head and the top edge of the frame. Too little makes a shot feel cramped, and too much leaves the person sunk at the bottom. In a 9:16 clip the top edge also sits under app buttons and text, so a face-tracked reframe has to set headroom with that in mind.
Headroom meaning in film and video
In framing, headroom is the gap above a person's head. It is one of the first things a camera operator checks, because an eye reads a tight crop as tension and a large gap as distance. Neither is wrong, but they say different things.
It is a close cousin of lead room, the space in front of a person who is looking or moving sideways, and of the rule of thirds, which usually puts the eyes in the upper part of the frame.
What too little and too much look like
| Framing | What the viewer notices | Usual fix |
|---|---|---|
| Head touches or crosses the top edge | Cramped, the person looks cut off | Reframe lower, or zoom out |
| Large empty band above the head | Person looks small or sunk, wasted picture | Tilt up or crop in |
| Face hidden under the platform's top buttons | Eyes or forehead covered by app interface | Leave clear space at the top |
| Headroom changes between cuts | Feels like a jump even without a jump cut | Match the gap from clip to clip |
Why vertical clips make headroom harder
A podcast is shot wide, and a 9:16 clip is a narrow window cut from that frame. Something has to decide where the window sits. If it centres on the face but ignores the head, the top of the crop can shave hair or leave a ceiling's worth of empty space.
Platforms add their own demands. Meta tells advertisers to keep the top, bottom and sides of 9:16 ads free of key elements, and its Reels ad guide gives at least 14% at the top, 35% at the bottom and 6% at each side. Those numbers are for ads, not ordinary Reels. TikTok says the safe zone depends on the video and caption length and publishes downloadable guides instead of fixed margins. The takeaway is that the very top of the frame is not a place to put a face. See safe zone.
Example: a guest who leans in
A guest sits upright for an hour, then leans toward the microphone to make a point. On a fixed crop the head rises toward the top edge. A reframe that follows the face should drop the window down as the head rises, and then settle again. The test is simple: scrub to the moment of the lean and look at the top edge.
Decision rule: if hair or forehead touches the top edge on any frame of a clip, treat that clip as needing a second look before it goes out.
Headroom in audio
The word means something else in sound. Audio headroom is the margin between the loudest peak and the level where the signal distorts. EBU R 128, a broadcast loudness recommendation, says the true peak of a programme should not exceed -1 dBTP, which leaves a small margin below the digital ceiling. Construction and finance use the word for their own gaps, and this page does not cover them.
Where KeyMo touches it
KeyMo reframes horizontal video to 9:16 with automatic face tracking, so the window follows the speaker. We make no claim about the exact margin it leaves. Look at the top of the frame in each clip's preview before you publish; see auto reframe for how the idea works.
Sources: Meta Ads Guide: Instagram Reels video ads (safe zone) (checked 11 October 2026); Meta Business Help: Safe zone for 9:16 ads (checked 11 October 2026); TikTok Ads Help: In-feed ads (safe zone) (checked 11 October 2026); EBU R 128: Loudness normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals (checked 11 October 2026).