The client approved the 16:9 master on Tuesday. On Wednesday the social team asks for a vertical for Reels, TikTok and Shorts, “just a quick reframe”.
The automatic reframe looks fine on the first watch. On the second watch the CEO’s gestures keep pulling the crop off his face, the lower third reads “Marina Cos”, the logo in the top corner is gone and the burned-in subtitles sit right where the app puts its caption.
The software’s pass is the quick part. The editor’s time goes into the shots it got wrong and into everything that was designed for a wide frame.
In short
- Plan the vertical at the shoot: a 9:16 crop keeps only a narrow strip of a 16:9 frame.
- Run the automatic reframe on a copy of the edit, never on the approved timeline.
- Keyframe by hand what it gets wrong: two-shots, presenters who move, products.
- Rebuild graphics and subtitles away from the bottom and the right edge.
- Send the vertical as its own version, since the horizontal approval doesn’t cover it.
Plan the vertical at the shoot
A 9:16 crop from a 16:9 frame keeps a narrow strip in the middle, and nothing in the edit brings back a subject who stood outside it.
If the verticals are on the deliverables list before the shoot, the camera team frames for them, keeping the subject near the center with room on both sides. That post has the numbers on crop width and resolution, and our guide to filming a talking head covers the framing on the day.
When nobody planned for vertical, interviews and close shots usually survive. Wide shots with the action spread across the frame are where the reframe fails, so look at those before you promise a date.
Let the software do the first pass
Premiere, DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro each have an automatic reframe that finds the subject in each shot and moves a crop to follow it. Run it on a copy of the edit, never on the approved timeline.
Premiere Pro
In Premiere, select the sequence in the Project panel and choose Sequence > Auto Reframe Sequence.
You pick the target aspect ratio and a motion tracking preset, and Premiere creates a duplicate sequence at the new size, with the Auto Reframe effect on every clip, in a folder called Auto Reframe Sequences. The original stays as it was.
Adobe’s guide recommends:
- Slower Motion for footage with little or no camera movement, such as talking head interviews.
- Default for most content.
- Faster Motion for action.
Clip nesting is for edits with speed changes or motion keyframes you want to keep, though Adobe notes that nested clips don’t carry soft transitions properly.
DaVinci Resolve
In DaVinci Resolve, Smart Reframe sits in the Inspector, under Transform, and only in DaVinci Resolve Studio, the paid version. On a vertical timeline, choose the object of interest and click Reframe.
Auto lets Resolve pick the subject, and Reference Point lets you draw a box around it. Auto is the only option when several clips are selected, so reframe a two-shot on its own, with the box drawn by hand.
Final Cut Pro
In Final Cut Pro, select the project in the browser, choose Edit > Duplicate Project As, set the Video Format to Vertical and tick Smart Conform.
Apple’s guide says it analyzes each clip for faces and other areas of visual interest and turns on overscan view, so you can see the part of each shot outside the new frame. Modify > Smart Conform does the same on selected clips.
Fix by hand what the automatic pass gets wrong
The automatic pass handles one person talking to camera well. It struggles with:
- Two people in one shot, where it picks one or drifts between them.
- A presenter who walks or gestures widely.
- Shots where what matters isn’t a face, like a product on a table or a screen.
For those, keyframe the position yourself. Set a keyframe at each moment where the subject settles and let the crop move only between them, with easing. A crop that chases every small head movement looks like a nervous camera operator.
When the subject jumps from one side of the frame to the other, a cut between two fixed crops usually looks better than a fast digital pan. If a two-shot can’t hold both people, cut to the B camera or cut between the speakers on their lines.
Watch two side effects. Push the crop past the edge of the original frame and a black strip appears on one side. Scale up to tighten a shot and the picture gets softer, which shows quickly on HD footage.
What breaks in the graphics and subtitles
The reframe moves the picture and leaves the design where it was. A lower third that starts at the left title-safe line falls outside the vertical strip, and a logo bug in the top corner disappears.
Rebuild the graphics in the vertical timeline, sized for a phone, and check names and job titles the way you did on the master, with our lower thirds checklist.
Then there’s the app on top of the video. Reels, TikTok and Shorts draw the caption and the account name across the bottom of the screen and a column of buttons down the right side.
The exact areas differ from app to app and move with updates, so keep faces, text and logos away from the bottom and the right edge, and check a draft on a phone.
Burned-in subtitles move up and the lines get shorter, since vertical has no agreed character limit. Our subtitle guidelines cover line length and reading speed.
Check the crop before you export
Watch the whole vertical once at phone size, with the sound on. Then go through it shot by shot:
- Every face is inside the frame, with the eyes clear of the top edge.
- Hands, products and screens are in the frame when the story needs them.
- No black edge where the crop went past the original frame.
- No shot noticeably softer than the ones around it.
- Every graphic, logo and subtitle is inside the frame and clear of the bottom and right edges.
- The crop holds still in shots that should stay still.
Then export a short test and watch it on your phone, in the app if you can, since trouble near the bottom and the right side shows up there.
Review the vertical as its own version
The client approved the horizontal cut. The vertical is a new picture, and that approval doesn’t cover it.
Send it as its own version, with a line about what to look at (“framing only, the edit is the same as the approved master”), and keep its notes apart from the master’s. A note like “move the logo up” that lands on the wrong file costs a round.
Whether the client signs off on the vertical or your team checks it internally is a decision for the deliverables list. Either way, the second export gets checked against the first, the same way you compare two versions of any cut.
How this works in RecReview
RecReview doesn’t reframe or export video. The reframe happens in Premiere, Resolve or Final Cut, and RecReview is where you check it and collect the notes.
The Guides button in the player’s control bar draws action safe at 93%, title safe at 90% and a rule of thirds grid, plus one delivery crop at a time, at 9:16, 4:5, 1:1 or 16:9, with everything outside the crop darkened.
Press G to show the two safe areas and again to hide the guides.
On the approved 16:9 master, the 9:16 crop shows what a centered vertical keeps. The crop always sits in the center, so scrub through with it on and, before the editor starts, comment on every shot where the subject falls outside it.
On the vertical itself, the 9:16 crop draws nothing, since the video already has that shape, and the safe areas sit at 93% and 90% of the vertical frame. They don’t show where each app puts its buttons, so the phone check still applies.
Press C to comment on the current frame, or mark the seconds where the presenter walks out of the crop with I and O so the note covers the whole stretch. You can draw a circle around the head that got cut off, or a rectangle where the frame should sit.
Give the vertical its own task: each export you upload becomes its next version, and v2 opens next to v1 side by side, as a split or as an overlay. The time-coded comments page has the rest.
