Videos

Instagram Reels maker

Reels is the only vertical surface where the platform states its safe area in plain text rather than shipping a template and leaving you to measure it. Meta asks for 14 percent of the top, 35 percent of the bottom and 6 percent of each side to be kept clear of text, logos and anything else that matters.

Create a video with OneCraftMeta's published safe zone in pixels, the length rule about three minutes, and sound-on design

A vertical video frame showing a customer quote with the speaker's name and role underneath — A vertical frame at 9 by 16, the shape Reels expects, with the text sized for a phone.

The safe zone in pixels

On a 1080 by 1920 frame, 14 percent off the top is 269 pixels, 35 percent off the bottom is 672, and 6 percent each side is 65. What survives is roughly 950 wide by 979 tall, a box slightly taller than it is wide, sitting in the upper middle of the frame. That is a genuinely tight brief and it explains why good Reels look centre weighted: everything of consequence has been pushed into that box on purpose.

The three minute rule that matters

Instagram allows a Reel to run up to twenty minutes, which is a red herring. The rule worth knowing is that Reels over three minutes are not recommended to new audiences, so a long one is shown to people who already follow you. If reach is the point, stay well under three minutes. Standard length here builds 4 to 9 scenes, which lands around twenty seconds and is comfortably inside that.

Reels plays with the sound on

This is the opposite of a feed placement and worth designing around. Reels defaults to sound on, so narration is heard rather than skimmed. Captions still earn their place for accessibility and for people scrolling in a quiet room, and they are on by default here, generated live from the narration. Meta's own split testing found 9:16 creative with audio that respects the safe zone delivered twice as much and at a 34.5 percent lower cost per result than static images.

The cover is a separate decision

A Reel cover is 420 by 654, about 1 to 1.55, but your profile grid crops it closer to 3 by 4. So anything you rely on in the cover should sit centred rather than near the top or bottom edge. That is a choice you make in Instagram after upload rather than here, but it is worth picking a frame from your video that survives the crop.

How it works, in three steps

Step 1
Build vertical and keep the middle busy
Set the format to vertical and think of the usable frame as the middle band. Text that drifts low is the first thing Instagram's own interface covers.
Step 2
Write for a viewer who can hear you
Unlike a muted feed, narration carries here. Say the thing rather than putting all of it on screen, and let the on-screen copy stay short.
Step 3
Drag anything that sits low
In the builder you can move a slot on the preview per format, and those nudges are kept for vertical only, so the landscape cut is untouched.

The full walkthrough with screenshots is in the guide Export one video for YouTube, Reels and TikTok.

Limits worth knowing

Captions render 120 pixels from the bottom, well inside Meta's 672 pixel bottom exclusion, so on Reels they can sit under the caption and profile block.
There is no scheduling or direct publishing. The export is an MP4 you upload in the Instagram app.
Reels ads do not support auto-captioning on Meta's side, so the burned in captions here are doing that job.
Instagram wants at least 720 pixels and at least 30 frames a second. Every export here is 30 fps at 1080 or 2160 wide, so both are met.

Questions people ask

What resolution should I upload?

1080 by 1920 covers it. Instagram's stated minimum is 720 pixels and it accepts anything from 1.91:1 through to 9:16, so the standard export here is already correct without resizing.

How do I stop text landing under the caption bar?

Treat the bottom 35 percent as unusable and move anything important above it. In the builder you can drag a slot on the vertical preview and the position is stored for that format alone.

Should the video open with my logo?

Rarely. A logo bumper is a fine second beat but a weak first one, because a Reel is competing for a thumb that is already moving. A hook question or a bold statement earns the next two seconds better.

Can I reuse the same file for Stories?

Yes, the canvas and the safe zone are the same 14, 35 and 6. Stories furniture sits in the same places, so a Reel built inside the safe box works there without changes.

Make your own video

The button opens the generator with this use case already described. Change the wording to match yours, generate, then edit anything you like.

Create a video with OneCraft

Vertical video maker

If you only make one vertical file, it has to survive four different sets of interface furniture. Each platform covers a different part of the frame, so the design target is not any one safe zone, it is the union of all of them, and that union is a smaller box than most people expect.

Instagram video ad

The two Instagram ad placements look similar and behave differently. A Feed ad gets 125 characters of primary text and a viewer who may pause. A Reels ad gets 44 characters, no auto-captioning from Meta, and a viewer who is already moving. The video has to absorb what the copy fields cannot hold.

Cursor and spotlight in a tutorial video

Two devices point at things in a walkthrough. A cursor that travels to a control and clicks it, and a spotlight that rings a region and dims everything around it. Both are aimed by hand on the preview, and that is deliberate: the AI is kept away from them because a pointer aimed at the wrong pixel is worse than no pointer.

More finished work of this kind is on the video examples hub.