Aspect ratios and cutdowns: one production, every platform

The single most common avoidable cost in video is discovering, after delivery, that the film needs to exist in three more shapes. It is avoidable because the decision that creates the problem is made on day one, and it is expensive because a vertical version of a horizontal film is not a crop. It is a re-edit.

What each ratio is for

Most brands need three: 9:16 for anything full-screen on a phone, 4:5 or 1:1 for feed, and 16:9 for the site and everything else.

Why cropping does not work

Take a 16:9 frame and crop it to 9:16 and you keep about 30 percent of the picture. What you throw away is usually the composition.

• Two-shots collapse. Anything with two people or a subject and a product loses one of them.
• Type breaks. Titles laid out for a wide frame either overflow or shrink to unreadable.
• Headroom goes wrong. A face framed for horizontal sits badly in vertical, and the crop cannot invent the room above it.
• Motion leaves frame. A pan designed for a wide plate exits a narrow one early.
• Safe areas differ. Platform interface elements sit over the top and bottom of a vertical frame, and a crop puts your subtitles under them.

Planning for every format from the start

The cheap approach is to decide the format set before production, then build so that each output is a reframe rather than a rescue.

1. 01Name the outputs in the brief. Which ratios, which durations, which placements. This one line changes how everything gets shot or built.
2. 02Shoot or generate with room. Frame slightly wider than the horizontal needs, so the vertical reframe has picture to work with. In animation, build the composition larger than the delivery frame.
3. 03Keep the subject off dead centre in a way that survives both. Composition that works at both extremes is a real constraint and a solvable one.
4. 04Keep type on its own layers. Titles get laid out per ratio. If they are baked into the plate, every ratio is a rebuild.
5. 05Leave safe margins. Roughly 10 percent top and bottom in vertical for platform interface.
6. 06Cut the shortest version first. If the 15-second cut works, the 60 is an expansion. The reverse rarely holds.

Duration, by placement

Cutdowns are not just shorter. Each length has a different structural job.

Captions, and where to put them

Captions are not an accessibility afterthought; they are the default reading mode for a large share of the audience. Three rules that survive every platform.

• Burn them in for social, keep an SRT for the site. Burned-in captions cannot be turned off, which is the point; a sidecar file keeps the site version searchable and switchable.
• Keep them out of the bottom fifth in vertical. That band belongs to the platform's own interface, and captions placed there get covered.
• Style them. Platform auto-captions look identical across every brand using them, which makes yours look like everyone else's for no reason.

A delivery checklist

1. 01Master in the highest resolution the project supports, graded, with captions as a separate file.
2. 029:16 at 1080 by 1920, burned-in captions, safe margins respected.
3. 034:5 or 1:1 for feed, reframed rather than cropped.
4. 0416:9 for site and email, with a poster frame exported.
5. 05Each ratio in the durations the media plan actually calls for.
6. 06Frame exports as stills, for press, social and email.
7. 07Source files, so the next cutdown does not start from a render.

That last item is worth asking about before signing anything, how to choose a video production company covers the other terms that are easier to agree early than to renegotiate later, and pricing covers what a full format set should add to a quote.