9:16 — vertical, full-screen
The default for Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Snapchat. This is a phone held upright, filling the entire screen. If you're shooting new footage specifically for short-form, shoot vertical from the start — cropping horizontal footage into 9:16 later usually means losing the edges of the frame, which is exactly where captions and important visual elements often sit.
1:1 — square, feed posts
Square used to be the Instagram feed default and still shows up well in feed placements and some ad formats. It's a safer crop from horizontal footage than 9:16 since you're losing less width, but it's worth checking your captions don't end up too close to the top/bottom edges once cropped to square.
16:9 — horizontal, YouTube and traditional video
The standard for YouTube uploads (not Shorts), most desktop viewing, and traditional broadcast-style content. If your primary platform is long-form YouTube and short-form is secondary, shoot 16:9 and crop down for vertical rather than the other way around — you'll lose less.
Why exporting the wrong ratio breaks your captions specifically
Aspect ratio mismatches don't just letterbox your video — platforms often crop to fill the expected frame, and a caption positioned safely within a 9:16 frame can end up partially or fully cut off once forced into 1:1 or vice versa. This is a common, easy-to-miss failure: the video looks fine, but a line of dialogue is now half off-screen because the export ratio didn't match the caption positioning it was designed for.
The safe practice is to caption after you've locked the final export ratio for each platform, not before — or use a tool that lets you preview and re-export the same captioned clip across ratios without redoing the timing.
A quick reference
- Instagram Reels, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Snapchat: 9:16
- Instagram feed post, some carousel/ad formats: 1:1
- YouTube (standard uploads), most desktop-first platforms: 16:9
If you're posting the same clip across all three, plan for three separate exports rather than one export force-fit into every placement — the ten minutes it takes is cheaper than a caption getting clipped in production.
uniqueness exports the same captioned clip in 9:16, 1:1, or 16:9 directly, with caption positioning that adapts to each ratio rather than assuming one.
Export once, every ratio
Same captions, correctly positioned for 9:16, 1:1, and 16:9.
Open the studio →