How to repurpose one video for every platform

Repurposing video content means making one video work in every place it will be watched, not uploading the same file everywhere. Build it once with a landscape and a vertical layout, make a shorter cut for feeds, keep captions and key text clear of each app’s interface, then publish each version where its shape and length fit: 16:9 on a YouTube watch page and your website, 9:16 on Shorts, Reels and TikTok.

The work is mostly planning. A video briefed for one shape and one length takes hours to adapt afterwards. A video briefed for two shapes and two lengths from the start takes minutes.

Plan for both formats before you build

Decide the lead format by where most viewers will be, then brief the video so the other format works too.

The gym membership video is a vertical 9:16 offer video of seven scenes in 31 seconds, built for phone feeds. Its hook question, “When did you last go?”, its offer scene and its countdown are made for a thumb scroll. The same offer also needs to live on the gym’s website, where visitors are on a laptop and a tall video leaves most of the page empty, so it needs a landscape version too.

The SaaS feature launch video is the opposite: six landscape scenes in 27 seconds, suited to a product page and a YouTube channel. Its vertical version is the one for LinkedIn on a phone and for Shorts.

Three briefing habits make the second format easy. Keep headlines short, because a line that fits a wide frame wraps in a narrow one. Put one idea in each scene, so no scene depends on two images side by side. And keep the essential fact of each scene, the price, the code, the date, in the words and the voice, not only in a corner of the picture.

What reflows, and what needs a look

Cropping throws away most of a frame: a 16:9 picture cut to 9:16 keeps about a third of its width. Relayout keeps everything and rearranges it. When a video is built from scenes whose text, images and buttons have their own positions for each shape, switching format moves them into the new frame rather than slicing through them. The mechanics, and the few kinds of scene that deserve a second look after a switch, are on the switch video format page.

The narration, the music and the scene order are shared between formats, so a change to a line lands in both versions. Layout edits made by hand are kept per format, which means the vertical cut can be adjusted without disturbing the landscape one. Play each version through once before exporting.

Cuts by platform: length is the second format

Shape is only half of repurposing. The other half is length, because a feed and a watch page reward different durations. Wistia’s analysis of more than 13 million videos found videos under a minute average 52 percent engagement, and it recommends under a minute for awareness and social, one to five minutes for education, and longer formats for nurturing and training.

That suggests a shorter feed cut of most promos. The gym video’s scenes run 3.5, 3, 4.4, 5.8, 4.6, 4.2 and 5.2 seconds. Keeping the hook, the offer, the countdown and the close gives a cut of about 17.5 seconds that still carries the question, the deal, the deadline and the terms. The countdown offer video is already that shape at 18 seconds, which is why it needs no second cut.

Tutorials go the other way. A 40 second software demo belongs in full on a help page, and a teaser of about 20 seconds made of its opening question, two key screens and its close can point feed viewers to it.

The table below the article sets each platform next to the format and length it publishes. Two rows catch people out. YouTube treats any square or vertical upload of three minutes or less as a Short, so a vertical file will not land on a normal watch page. And LinkedIn accepts four shapes, so the choice there is about whether the audience is on desktop or on a phone. For more on length by placement, see how long a promo video should be.

Captions: travel with the file, placed for the shape

Many feeds start playback without sound, and not every placement offers a caption button, so burned in captions are the only captions certain to appear everywhere a repurposed file goes. LinkedIn, for example, lists captions as optional on video ads, which means an uncaptioned ad simply runs without them.

Position is what changes between formats. On a vertical frame the bottom of the picture is covered by the app’s own caption text, names and buttons, so captions and key text sit higher than on landscape. What each platform publishes about those overlays is collected in vertical video safe zones.

Check one more thing in the vertical cut: the scene with the most text. The gym video’s close speaks “Join today. Twelve month plan, direct debit.” and prints the same terms as footer lines under the button, so that scene has to fit a caption, a button and three lines of terms in a narrow frame.

Posting: stagger, and match the file to the place

Publish the evergreen versions first. The landscape video goes on the website and the YouTube watch page on day one, because those are found through search and links over months.

On the website, place the video next to the claim it supports rather than in a gallery of its own. The gym’s offer video belongs beside the membership prices, where a visitor deciding whether to join will see it, and the launch video belongs on the page for the feature it announces. A video on the page where the question is asked does more work than the same video one click away.

Then roll out the vertical cut across feeds rather than on all of them in the same hour. The first platform shows which hook holds viewers, and that can change the cut for the next. Upload natively to each platform rather than posting links to another platform’s video, and write the post text for each audience, since a LinkedIn reader and a TikTok viewer want different words around the same picture.

For email and direct messages, a share link is often better than an attachment: nothing to download, and the video plays in the browser.

Common mistakes

• Cropping instead of relaying out. A crop loses the sides of every scene, often including the text.
• Uploading the vertical file to YouTube and expecting a watch page. Under three minutes, it becomes a Short.
• One length everywhere. A 45 second feed video and a 15 second help page video both underperform.
• Adding black bars to fit a shape. YouTube advises against padding the video itself; the player adapts.
• Captions in the landscape position on the vertical cut. They end up under the app’s buttons.
• Posting everywhere at once. You lose the chance to learn which hook works before the next upload.

Build it

The video builder has two formats: landscape at 1920 by 1080 and vertical at 1080 by 1920. Switching between them in the toolbar rebuilds each scene’s layout for the new shape instead of cropping it, and edits made by hand are stored per format. Captions are burned in, on by default per scene, and inset 44 pixels from the bottom on landscape and 120 on vertical. An export is free to start when the video is 30 seconds or shorter and needs no new narration, otherwise it costs one credit, and 4K export is available from the Starter plan. A share link opens a live player page, not an MP4 file. The steps for switching and exporting each version are in the tutorial on exporting a video for YouTube, Reels and TikTok.