What is vertical video?

What counts as vertical video

Any frame taller than it is wide is vertical, but the standard is 9:16. Divide 1080 by 1920 and you get 0.5625, the same shape as a 16:9 screen turned on its side. Square video (1:1) is not vertical, and 4:5 is only slightly tall. The aspect ratio entry explains the maths.

Meta recommends 9:16 for Stories and Reels because most people hold their phones vertically. So the platforms accept more than one shape, but 9:16 is the one the feed is built around.

From 16:9 to 9:16

Take a 1920 by 1080 landscape recording. To make a 9:16 frame at the full 1080 height, the crop can be only 607.5 pixels wide, about 32% of the picture. Everything outside that slice is thrown away, so the slice must follow the person.

• A fixed centre crop works only if the speaker never moves.
• A face-tracked crop follows the speaker, which is why the reframe is a decision about where to look, not a resize.
• A wide two-person shot cannot fit both people in 32% of the frame. Cut between speakers instead of showing both.

See auto reframe for how the follow works and why shaky tracking looks worse than a still crop.

Common mistakes

• Adding black bars to a 16:9 video to fake vertical. YouTube advises against padding or black bars inside the video, as they interfere with the player resizing.
• Uploading a landscape video and expecting a Short. YouTube says a wider ratio such as 16:9 keeps a video from being classed as a Short.
• Placing text close to the edges, where app buttons cover it. Read safe zones.
• Stretching a video to fill the frame. Faces go wrong first.

Where KeyMo touches it

KeyMo outputs vertical 9:16 clips at 1080x1920, 30 fps, H.264 with AAC audio, and never 16:9. It reframes with automatic face tracking, so a landscape podcast recording ends up with the speaker in frame. There is no watermark on any plan.