Vertical video (9:16)
Also known as: 9:16 video, portrait video, vertical format
Video framed taller than it is wide, at a 9:16 aspect ratio, made for phone screens and short-form platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.
Updated
What it means
Vertical video is footage framed in portrait orientation, almost always at a 9:16 aspect ratio, with 1080 by 1920 pixels as the standard. It fills a phone held upright, which is how most people scroll TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, so vertical clips take up the whole screen instead of a thin strip.
Action-camera footage is usually shot in horizontal 16:9 or in taller 4:3 or 8:7 sensor modes, so for most creators vertical is a cropping problem. The editor has to decide which part of a wide frame stays inside a narrow window, and keep the action in it as it moves.
How it works in practice
There are three common routes. Shoot vertical directly - many action cameras and DJI Osmo models can record 9:16 or be mounted on their side. Shoot in a tall mode such as GoPro's 8:7 full-sensor format and crop either way later. Or shoot 360 and reframe to 9:16 in the Insta360 app, pointing the virtual camera wherever the action is.
Cropping a 4K 16:9 frame to 9:16 leaves a window about 1215 pixels wide and 2160 tall - enough for a sharp 1080 by 1920 export. From a 1080p source the same crop is only about 608 pixels wide and looks soft once scaled up. Editors keyframe the crop position or use auto-reframe tools in Premiere Pro and CapCut to follow the subject.
What to watch out for
A straight center crop is the usual mistake. Action rarely stays in the middle of a wide frame: the rider in follow-cam footage drifts to one side, a drone shot's subject sits on a third, and a center crop loses them. Keyframe the crop or reframe shot by shot.
The platform interface also covers part of the frame. Captions, buttons and the account name sit along the bottom and right edge on Reels and TikTok, so titles and faces need to stay in the central safe zone. And avoid simply dropping a horizontal edit onto a blurred vertical background - viewers spot it as a repost, and the action ends up tiny in the middle of the screen.
How RawClip handles it
RawClip does not output vertical 9:16 video; the finished highlight is delivered as MP4 in 4K and 1080p. For Reels or Shorts, crop the 4K file to 9:16 in an editor, where the extra resolution keeps the vertical version sharp. 360 footage should be reframed to a flat MP4 or MOV in the Insta360 app or Insta360 Studio before upload.