A frame that looks perfect in your editor can lose its title card under a caption, a username and a column of buttons once it plays inside a vertical app. This guide shows the three frame shapes you will deliver most often and where the trouble usually is.
What the official pages actually say
Instagram Reels (Meta)
Meta's ad specifications for Instagram Reels give the most concrete numbers of the three big platforms. The Instagram Reels video ad spec lists a 9:16 ratio and a 1440 x 2560 pixel resolution, and recommends leaving at least 14% of the top, 35% of the bottom and 6% on each side free of text, logos and other key creative. That guidance is written for ads, so treat it as a careful reference point for organic Reels too, not as a rule for them. Meta also offers a downloadable safe zone checker on its Reels ads page.
TikTok
TikTok's creative best practices recommend vertical 9:16 video and keeping content visible within the interface safe zone defined in each ad specification. TikTok does not publish one universal percentage on that page, and the zone changes with caption length and ad format, so this guide does not invent a number. Check the preview in TikTok's own tools before you post anything with critical text.
YouTube Shorts
YouTube's help page on uploading Shorts describes Shorts as vertical videos up to 3 minutes long, with a maximum upload resolution of 1080p. It does not publish safe zone percentages, so keep the same habits you use for Reels: nothing important at the bottom or along the right edge.
Practical rules for filmmakers
- Titles in the upper middle. Place title cards a little above center in vertical frames. The lower third, where a classic trailer puts credits, is exactly where captions and handles live.
- Faces off the right edge. The right side holds like, comment and share buttons in most vertical apps.
- Burn in your own subtitles above the app caption area. Keep them to two short lines and test on a phone, not a monitor.
- Reframe, do not just crop. A 2.39:1 frame center-cropped to 9:16 keeps less than a third of the width. Pick the subject for every shot.
- 16:9 still matters. Festival pages, press links and YouTube trailers want widescreen. Square works for feed posts where you want more height than 16:9 without a full vertical reframe.
Next step: plan the teaser itself with the teaser planner, or read how to cut a teaser from your film, which covers vertical versions in detail.