The short answer
Use landscape (16:9) for your website and YouTube, and portrait (9:16) for Reels, YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Stories. Don’t crop one into the other: make a version laid out for each screen. Keep words and faces away from the edges where apps put their buttons, and use captions everywhere, burned in for social media and as a separate file for your website and YouTube.
You’ve got one business film, and you want it on your website, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. Each of those wants something slightly different. Get the shape wrong and the film arrives with black bars, cropped heads or your phone number hidden behind a “like” button.
Two shapes cover almost everything
Landscape, 16:9. Wider than it is tall, like a television. It suits websites, because it fills the width of a desktop screen, and YouTube, where 16:9 is the standard on a computer.
Portrait, 9:16. Taller than it is wide, the shape of a phone held upright. It fills the screen in the phone-first apps: Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Stories.
Square (1:1) and 4:5 still exist, and most apps accept them, but if you have landscape and portrait you rarely need anything else.
Platform by platform
Platforms change their limits often. These were checked on each platform’s own help pages on 11 October 2026; check again before you rely on a specific number.
| Where | Shape to use | What the platform says |
|---|---|---|
| Your website | Landscape 16:9 | Your choice. Landscape fills a desktop screen. |
| YouTube (normal videos) | Landscape 16:9 | 16:9 is the standard aspect ratio on a computer. Don’t add your own black bars; YouTube pads vertical videos itself. |
| YouTube Shorts | Portrait 9:16 | Square or vertical videos up to three minutes (since 15 October 2024) are treated as Shorts. |
| Instagram Reels | Portrait 9:16 | Upload between 1.91:1 and 9:16, minimum 30 fps and 720 pixels. Reels can be up to 20 minutes, but reels over three minutes won’t be recommended to new audiences. |
| TikTok | Portrait 9:16 | TikTok’s own ad specifications recommend vertical 9:16. |
| Facebook feed | Either | Meta’s video chart lists 16:9 to 9:16 for the feed. |
| Facebook Stories | Portrait 9:16 | Meta’s chart lists 1.91:1 to 9:16, from 1 to 120 seconds, for Facebook Stories. |
| Google Business Profile | Either | Up to 30 seconds, up to 75 MB, 720p or higher. |
Why cropping goes wrong
The quick fix is to take a landscape film and crop it to portrait. Here’s the problem: a 9:16 frame cut from the middle of a 16:9 frame keeps only about a third of the width.
Whatever was near the sides goes:
- the second person in a two-person shot;
- the product on the left of the counter;
- the end of a title line, or the start of your phone number;
- the van, half of which is now off-screen.
The better approach is to plan both shapes from the start. In practice that means:
- keeping important things near the centre when you film or choose photos;
- shooting or choosing a portrait version of key shots, not just landscape;
- laying out titles and contact details separately for each shape, so text sits where it reads best on that screen.
Safe zones: keep words clear of the buttons
Phone apps lay their own controls over your video: the like, comment and share buttons down the right, the caption and account name along the bottom, and sometimes a header across the top.
Meta’s ad guidance for Instagram Reels says to keep text, logos and key elements out of the top 14% and bottom 35% of the frame, and 6% in from each side. TikTok’s ad guidance says the safe zone depends on the shape, the caption length and other formats, and offers downloadable templates.
Those numbers are for ads, but the buttons are there on ordinary posts too, so they make a sensible rule of thumb. Put your main words in the middle band of a portrait frame, and preview the post on a phone before it goes live.
Captions: burn in for social, a separate file elsewhere
Captions are text versions of what’s said, timed to the speech. They let people follow your film with the sound off, and they’re an accessibility requirement: WCAG 2.2, the web accessibility standard, asks for captions on prerecorded video with sound (Success Criterion 1.2.2, Level A).
There are two ways to add them:
- Burned in (open captions). Part of the picture. Always visible and look the same everywhere. Best for Reels, Shorts, TikTok and Stories, where you can’t rely on viewers turning captions on.
- A separate caption file (closed captions). A small text file, usually .vtt or .srt, that the player shows on request. Best for your website and YouTube, where viewers can switch captions on or off, and YouTube lets you upload a caption file to any video.
Don’t do both on the same version, or viewers get two sets of words on screen.
A naming habit that saves time later
Once you’ve got two shapes, captioned and uncaptioned, and maybe a 30-second cut, you’ll have several files that look almost the same. Name them so you can tell at a glance:
business-film-60s-16x9.mp4
business-film-60s-9x16-captions.mp4
business-film-30s-16x9.mp4
business-film-60s.vtt
Keep them in one shared folder, with the date you received them. When someone asks for “the video” for a trade-show screen, you’ll send the right one first time.
If you’d rather not make it yourself, every VideoWorks film comes in both shapes, each laid out for its own screen; how it works shows an example.
