How to prepare video for social media
The shapes each feed expects, why the aspect ratio matters far more than the resolution, and the one setting people get backwards.
In short
Get the aspect ratio right first — 9:16 for Reels, Shorts and TikTok, 1:1 or 4:5 for feeds, 16:9 for YouTube. Export at higher quality than feels necessary, because the platform will re-encode it.
Platforms care about shape far more than they care about resolution. A correctly-shaped 720p clip looks right; a wrongly-shaped 4K one gets letterboxed into a strip.
| Destination | Ratio | Common size |
|---|---|---|
| Reels, Shorts, TikTok | 9:16 | 1080 × 1920 |
| Instagram feed | 4:5 or 1:1 | 1080 × 1350 or 1080 × 1080 |
| Stories | 9:16 | 1080 × 1920 |
| YouTube | 16:9 | 1920 × 1080 |
| X / LinkedIn feed | 16:9 or 1:1 | 1280 × 720 or 1080 × 1080 |
Changing shape: crop, do not stretch
Turning 16:9 footage into 9:16 throws away about three quarters of the width. Something has to go, and you should decide what. Resize with Fill crops from the centre automatically; cropping deliberately lets you keep the subject when they are not centred.
The setting people get backwards
Compressing hard before uploading. Every platform re-encodes what you give it, and it encodes from your file — so a heavily-compressed upload gets compressed again, and the losses stack. Export at Higher quality and let the platform do its own reduction from a clean source.
Captions
Feeds autoplay muted, so a clip that only makes sense with sound is a clip most people scroll past. Burned-in text travels with the video wherever it is reposted, unlike a subtitle track. Keep it in the middle third — platforms overlay usernames and buttons across the bottom.
Mistakes worth avoiding
- Uploading 16:9 to a vertical feed and accepting the black bars.
- Compressing to Smallest file before uploading.
- Putting text at the very bottom of the frame, where the interface covers it.
Tools used in this guide
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