Vertical video rules the short-form world, and getting the dimensions right is the difference between a clip that fills the screen and one that sits in an awkward letterboxed strip. Here is what each platform expects and how to reframe footage cleanly — all locally, without uploading your video to a resizer site.
The dimensions that matter
The big three short-form destinations — TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts — all want 1080×1920, a 9:16 vertical frame. Instagram’s main feed prefers 1080×1080 square, and standard landscape YouTube is 1920×1080. If you remember just one number for short-form, make it 1080×1920.
The real challenge: horizontal to vertical
Most cameras shoot horizontal, and most short-form is vertical, so the hard part is the reframe. Simply stretching a wide clip to a tall frame distorts everyone into funhouse proportions — never do it. There are two good approaches instead.
Crop, contain, or blur
Cropping fills the vertical frame by zooming in and cutting off the left and right edges — great when your subject is centred, less great when the action lives at the sides. Containing places the whole wide frame inside the tall one with bars above and below. A nicer version of containing fills those bars with a blurred, enlarged copy of the video itself, so the frame feels full rather than empty. VideoDock’s social resizers offer all three modes.
Doing it in VideoDock
Open the resizer for your platform — YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, or TikTok — and it loads with the correct 1080×1920 preset already selected. Drop your clip, pick a fit mode (cover, contain, or blurred background), and export. The reframing happens on your device, and the file is never uploaded.
A tip for next time
If you know in advance that a clip will end up vertical, frame your subject toward the centre when you shoot. Centre-weighted footage survives a 9:16 crop far better than action pinned to the edges, and it spares you from choosing between an awkward crop and empty bars later. Plan for the frame and the resize becomes trivial.
Reframe to vertical 1080×1920 for Shorts.