Video aspect ratios for every platform

The short answer

Use 9:16 vertical for full-screen short-form video such as Reels, TikTok, Shorts and Stories. Use 4:5 portrait or 1:1 square for videos that sit in a scrolling feed. Use 16:9 widescreen for YouTube, your website, presentations and television. Plan the shoot so one set of footage can be cropped cleanly to all of them.

An aspect ratio is simply the shape of the frame, written as width to height. It says nothing about resolution or quality. What it does decide is how much of a phone screen your video fills, what can be seen at the edges, and whether text and faces survive the crop.

The ratios that matter, and where they are used

9:16 vertical

The native shape of a phone held upright. It fills the screen completely, which is why full-screen short-form platforms are built around it. For short-form video, shooting natively vertical, or at least framing for vertical, is no longer optional. Interfaces overlay captions, buttons and profile details on the edges of the frame, so keep key action and text towards the centre.

4:5 portrait

The workhorse of the feed. It takes more vertical space than square without asking the viewer to go full-screen, which makes it a strong default for in-feed video and photography on Instagram and Facebook. Many brands use 4:5 for product stills and short product videos alike.

1:1 square

Square works almost everywhere, which is its strength. It suits carousels, marketplace listings, grid layouts and some ad placements. It is rarely the best-performing frame in any one place, but it is a safe choice when one asset must serve many.

16:9 widescreen

The standard for YouTube, websites, television and presentations. Brand films are usually finished in 16:9 or wider, because widescreen suits landscape, architecture, groups of people and cinematic movement. Homepage hero videos also sit naturally in this frame, though they often need a separate mobile crop.

Wider cinematic frames

Some brand films are finished in a wider, letterboxed frame for a cinematic feel. It can look beautiful in a dedicated player, but it wastes screen space in feeds. If you choose it for the hero film, plan separate vertical and portrait cuts rather than squeezing the wide version into them.

Shoot once, crop many: framing for every ratio

Most premium content now has to work in at least three frames. The efficient approach is to decide the final ratios before the shoot and compose for all of them at once.

• Agree the master frame. Decide which ratio matters most for each shot. The hero film may be widescreen while the product clips are vertical-first.
• Mark a shared safe area. Put frame guides for each final ratio on the monitor, so the director and camera operator can see what every crop will keep.
• Leave room above and below. A widescreen shot framed tightly on a face cannot become a good vertical. A little extra headroom and space around the subject makes cropping possible.
• Shoot vertical separately when it matters. For the key short-form pieces, turning the camera or using a second camera gives you a composed vertical frame rather than a crop.
• Keep text out of the camera frame. Add titles and captions in the edit, per ratio, instead of relying on signage or props that may be cropped away.

Which ratio for which job

When you write a brief, list every placement and its ratio. It is one of the most useful lines in a video brief, because it shapes how the director of photography lights and frames every set-up.

Photography follows the same logic

Stills need ratios planned too. Product photography for a website grid, campaign images for a vertical story and portrait images for the feed all crop differently from the same frame. When photography and video are captured on the same set, the photographer should shoot a little looser than feels natural, so each image can be cropped to every placement without losing the product. For luxury products, where the edge of a bottle or the curve of a strap matters, it is worth shooting the key hero images twice: once composed for vertical and once for horizontal.

Captions, text and safe zones

Each platform places its own interface on top of your video: usernames, captions, buttons, progress bars. Those overlays sit mostly around the edges and the lower part of a vertical frame. Keep faces, product and on-screen text within the central area, and check a draft on a phone inside the actual app before approving the final cut.

• Design titles and captions separately for each ratio rather than scaling one layout.
• Keep text large enough to read on a phone at arm's length.
• Place logos where the interface will not cover them.
• Add burned-in or uploaded captions, since much social video is watched without sound.

Common mistakes

1. Posting widescreen video to vertical placements. It appears as a small strip in the middle of the screen and is easy to scroll past.
2. Cropping without checking. Automatic crops cut off faces, products and text. Every ratio needs an editor's eye.
3. One edit for every frame. A pacing and layout that works in widescreen often feels slow in vertical. Re-edit, not just reframe.
4. Trusting old specification charts. Platforms update their recommended formats and interfaces. Check current guidance at delivery.

Planning ratios into production

The cheapest time to solve aspect ratios is before the shoot. A deliverables list with every ratio lets the crew frame and light for them, and lets the edit deliver a complete set. It is one reason batch production works so well: one shoot, composed for every frame, supplies a month of content across every platform.