Guide
9:16 at 1080 by 1920. The safe zone is the hard part
Vertical 9:16, 1080 wide by 1920 tall, MP4 with H.264 video and AAC audio. Applying that takes ten seconds. What costs money is the interface the app draws on top of your frame. A logo in the corner ends up behind a button. This page covers the screen area each shape gives away, where the safe zone sits, and how to rescue horizontal footage. By the end you will know exactly which pixels are yours.
- The delivery to default to
- 1080 x 1920
- Of the screen a square file gives away
- 44%
- Margin to keep clear at each end
- 190 px
A square file gives away 44 percent of the screen you paid for
The app plays video full screen on a phone held upright. A 9:16 file fills that screen exactly. Anything else gets letterboxed, cropped, or floated in a black field.
Other shapes are accepted and will run. Square and landscape are permitted the way a jacket over pyjamas is permitted. It works, and everybody can tell.
The arithmetic is blunt. On a 1080 by 1920 screen a square file occupies 56 percent of the area. A landscape file occupies about 32 percent. The rest is media spend you bought and handed back.
The same 9:16 file also travels furthest. It is the most portable ad shape in existence, which makes it the right default even where a placement would accept something else.
Because it travels, keep everything important away from the edges. Each destination covers a slightly different part of the frame. Design for the strictest one and you never make a second version.
Screen area a file fills on a 1080 by 1920 phone
The same media spend, three amounts of screen. Square hands back nearly half of what you bought.
- 9:16 vertical100%
- 1:1 square56%
- 16:9 landscape32%
The app draws its interface over your frame, and it moves without warning
The caption and username sit along the bottom. The action buttons stack up the right side. System elements sit at the top. The frame has a usable middle and unusable edges.
Text pinned to the lowest edge sits under the description. A logo in the bottom right corner sits behind the buttons. A key visual at the extreme top gets clipped on some devices.
Two consequences follow. Keep captions and burned-in text in the central vertical band. Frame the speaker with the head slightly high, so the face sits in the top third of the safe area rather than where text wants to go.
Interface dimensions change with app updates, so treat generous margins as insurance. Roughly a tenth of the height at top and bottom. A similar band on the right.
On a 1920 tall frame that is about 190 pixels off each end. It looks like waste until the app redesigns and your whole library still works.
Check it on a phone rather than a monitor. Open the app, note where the buttons sit today, then hold your own export beside it. One minute per style, not per ad.
Eight tenths of the height is yours
Roughly 190 pixels at each end belongs to the interface. Anything that must be read goes inside the lit band.
This is the whole editor
Highlight a phrase and a clip lands on those exact words. No timeline, no keyframes, no layers.
Three ways to save horizontal footage, and none of them is good
Crop in. Take the central 9:16 slice of the horizontal frame. It works when the subject is centred. It loses everything at the sides, which is usually where the context was.
Watch the result at phone size before committing. A wide shot cropped to vertical often becomes an unreadable smudge.
Reframe with motion. Track the subject and pan the crop to follow. Better results, more work, and it looks unsettled if the tracking is loose. It also costs a pass through another tool.
Rebuild the frame. Put the horizontal footage in a band across the middle and fill the rest with text, colour or a blurred copy. It is honest about what it is. It suits screen recordings and demonstrations rather than faces.
The fourth option is the only free one, and it has to happen before the shoot. Hold the phone upright. Camera at eye height. Stay under three minutes.
If you are commissioning footage, put the shape in the brief as numbers rather than words. Vertical means different pixel dimensions to different people. A delivery at the wrong shape is a reshoot dressed up as a misunderstanding.
Rescuing a horizontal file, in descending order of dignity
Every route costs something. The fourth costs nothing, and it is the only one that has to be decided in advance.
Crop in
Loses the sides, free
Reframe with motion
Another tool, another day
Rebuild the frame
Honest, best for screens
Shoot vertical
Costs nothing, needs planning
One 9:16 master travels furthest, which is why it is the only shape we export
Cutroom exports 9:16 MP4. That is the shape the placement was built around. It is also the shape that travels furthest without a second version.
One file covers TikTok, Reels, Shorts and vertical Meta placements. Keep the text in the central band and the same export runs in all of them.
Check your own placement breakdown before assuming you need more. Plenty of accounts run almost everything vertical and keep a square workflow alive out of habit.
If real spend does run on a placement wanting another shape, keep a general editor for that one pass. Or brief whoever makes your assets to deliver every shape from a single master.
Source length is the other number to plan around. Three minutes is the upload ceiling here. Footage from a longer shoot gets trimmed first, or recorded shorter.
Put both in the brief rather than discovering them afterwards. A ceiling you planned around costs nothing. A ceiling you meet on delivery day costs a session.
One shape is also one fewer decision on every ad you make. Nobody argues about which version goes where, and nobody exports the same cut three times to find out.
That saving compounds across a month. Twelve ads, one shape, one safe zone, and a library that still works the next time an app redesigns its interface.
Questions people ask
- Can I run a square video instead?
- It will run, and it will letterbox on a full-screen vertical placement. Square is a reasonable compromise when you need one file across placements that vary in shape. On a vertical-first platform it costs nearly half the screen and looks like a repurposed asset, because it is one.
- What resolution and file settings should I use?
- 1080 by 1920, MP4 container, H.264 video, AAC audio, standard frame rate matching your source. Higher resolutions are fine and get re-encoded anyway. What matters more is that your source was not already compressed twice before you edited it.
- Does the same file work for other vertical feeds?
- Broadly yes. 9:16 is the shared standard across vertical short-video placements, so one export usually covers several destinations. Safe-zone positions differ slightly between apps, which is another argument for keeping text in the middle band.
- Should captions be burned in or added in the app?
- Burn them in if you want control over style, position and timing. Burn them in if the same file is going to more than one destination. Platform-generated captions are convenient and inconsistent, and they sit wherever the app decides.
- Is one shape enough for every placement?
- For vertical feeds, yes, and that is where most spend now sits. If real budget runs somewhere that needs square or horizontal, keep a general editor for that one pass, or commission every shape from a single master.
Vertical, 1080 by 1920, everything that matters out of the edges. Cutroom exports that shape and only that shape, which is one fewer decision on every ad you make.