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Glossary

What Is Aspect Ratio 9:16?

Aspect ratio is a video’s shape, width to height: 9:16 is vertical, as on TikTok, Reels and Shorts; 16:9 is wide, 1:1 square and 4:5 the tall feed shape.

Each platform has a shape it shows best. TikTok, Reels and YouTube Shorts fill a phone screen with 9:16, for example 1080 × 1920 pixels. YouTube says a Short can be square or vertical and up to 3 minutes long; Meta’s ads guide lists Reels at 9:16 and recommends 1440 × 2560. YouTube’s main player is 16:9, and Instagram’s feed shows 1:1 and 4:5.

Changing a video’s aspect ratio means cropping it or adding space around it. Cropping a wide video to vertical keeps only a slice of each frame, about a third of the width, so the crop has to follow whoever matters in each shot; the other way is to keep the whole frame and fill the rest with a blurred copy or a colour.

For a creator, make the video in the shape of the platform it is for, and keep text and faces where that platform’s buttons do not cover them: the safe zone.

Turn a wide video vertical, with the crop following the subject

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Questions

What size is 9:16?

1080 × 1920 pixels is the common size: 1080 wide, 1920 tall. Any size with the same proportion is 9:16.

What aspect ratio are YouTube Shorts?

Square or vertical, YouTube says, up to three minutes long. Vertical 9:16 fills the phone screen.

How do I turn a 16:9 video into 9:16?

Crop it with the frame following the subject in each shot, or keep the whole frame with space above and below. Clip-Short’s Reframe does the first.

Is 4:5 or 9:16 better for Instagram?

Reels are 9:16. 4:5 is the tall shape of the main feed for posts.

What aspect ratio is a normal YouTube video?

16:9, such as 1920 × 1080 pixels, the shape of YouTube’s main player and of most televisions and laptops.

Sources

Related terms

Safe zone

The safe zone is the part of a vertical video that the app’s buttons, captions and profile name do not cover, where text and faces should stay to be seen.

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Reframe (Clip-Short)

Reframe is Clip-Short’s tool that changes a video’s shape, such as wide 16:9 to vertical 9:16, with the crop following the subject in each shot.

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YouTube Shorts

YouTube Shorts are vertical or square videos of up to 3 minutes, watched in a feed people swipe through and paid from a shared monthly pool.

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Burned-in captions

Burned-in captions, also called open or hardcoded captions, are part of the video picture itself, so everyone sees them and no viewer can turn them off.

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