Most long videos are recorded in 16:9, and most short ones are watched in 9:16. Getting from one to the other sounds like a simple crop. It is, until the speaker leans out of the frame, a second person starts talking, or the slide everyone needs to see is cut in half. Here are the three ways to convert horizontal video to vertical, and how to choose between them for each clip.
What you lose going from 16:9 to 9:16
A vertical frame cut from a horizontal one at the same height keeps only about a third of the width. Everything outside that third is gone: the person across the table, the whiteboard, the product on the desk. So the real question is not how to crop. It is what to keep in that third at each moment of the clip.
Method 1: Crop and follow
Cropping fills the whole vertical frame with picture, which is why it looks the most natural on a phone. It works whenever the important thing is a person talking. The catch is movement. A fixed crop is fine for someone sitting still in the middle of the frame; as soon as they move, or the conversation passes to someone else, the crop has to move too.
In a traditional editor that means keyframes: you set the crop at one moment, then at another, and the editor moves between them. It is precise but slow. Auto reframe does the same job by finding the faces in each shot and following whoever is speaking.
Method 2: Fit with a background
Fitting shrinks the whole horizontal picture to the width of the vertical frame and fills the space above and below. A blurred copy of the video is the usual fill, though a solid color or an image works too. Nothing is cut off, which makes this the right choice for slides, screen recordings, wide shots and anything with text near the edges.
The trade-off is size. The picture gets small on a phone, and faces are harder to read. Use the space you gained: put a title in the band above the picture and the captions in the band below.
Method 3: Split screen
A split screen stacks two parts of the picture, one above the other. It suits two kinds of moment: a fast exchange between two people, where cutting back and forth would be dizzying, and a speaker with a screen, where viewers need the face and what is being shown.
Split layouts work best in short stretches. For a long answer from one person, go back to a single crop.
How to choose for each clip
The right method depends on what is in the shot, so it can change from clip to clip within the same video.
- One person talking to the camera: crop and follow.
- Two or three people taking turns: crop and follow, cutting to whoever speaks.
- Quick back-and-forth between two people: split screen.
- Slides, a screen share or a wide scene: fit with a background, or split with the speaker.
- A post for the LinkedIn or Facebook feed: try 4:5 or 1:1, which keep more of the picture than 9:16.
Where to put faces and captions
Keep the eyes about a third of the way down the frame. That leaves room for captions in the lower middle and keeps the face clear of the platform’s buttons. Avoid the bottom of the frame for anything important: on TikTok, Reels and Shorts it sits under the post text and the account name.
If you add captions after reframing, check them against the new frame. A caption that sat neatly under a face in 16:9 can cover a chin in 9:16. An auto caption generator that places captions for the vertical frame saves you that pass.
Mistakes that give a conversion away
Viewers rarely notice good reframing. They notice these straight away.
- The crop stays on someone who has stopped talking while the voice comes from off screen.
- The text on a slide is cut off at both sides.
- The frame twitches because the crop follows every small head movement.
- Faces are tiny because a very wide shot was cropped without moving in.
- Captions sit over the speaker’s mouth or under the platform’s buttons.
Doing it in Vidoveli
Vidoveli’s vertical video converter works on every clip it makes and on any video you open in the editor. Choose 9:16, switch on Follow the active speaker, and auto reframe plans the framing shot by shot. You can open the list of shots and change the framing of any of them, switch a clip to Fit with a blurred, colored or image background, or use a split-screen layout. The ratio can change at any time, so the same clip can go out in 9:16 for Shorts and 4:5 for LinkedIn.
Bring the video in however it is stored: a link to it on YouTube, Google Drive or Dropbox, a direct link to the video file, or an upload. If you are cutting clips from a podcast or an interview, the podcast clip maker page covers what to expect with two or more speakers.
