Vertical video maker

The union of the safe zones

Meta publishes the strictest figures and states them in plain text: 14 percent off the top, 35 percent off the bottom, 6 percent each side, which on 1080 by 1920 is 269, 672 and 65 pixels. TikTok's measured template comes in around 130 top, 484 bottom and 140 right. Shorts sits near 180 top, 390 bottom, 120 right and 60 left. Stack them and the strictest edge wins every time: roughly 270 off the top, 675 off the bottom and 140 off each side. That leaves a usable box of about 800 by 975, centred and slightly high.

That box is harsh, so scope it

If a single file genuinely has to run everywhere, design inside 800 by 975 and accept that the frame is mostly empty at the edges. If you are only shipping to TikTok and Shorts, the box relaxes to roughly 800 by 1256, which is a much more comfortable shape. Choosing your platforms before you design is worth more than any layout trick, because it buys back 280 pixels of height.

Reflow, not crop

Every slot in every scene carries its own box for each canvas, so switching the format in the toolbar re-lays the design rather than cropping the wide one. Text reflows, rows become stacks, and per format overrides can change a slot's size, alignment, font size, camera move and 3D tilt, because a tilt that reads well wide will clip badly when the frame narrows. Manual edits are stored per format too, so fixing the vertical cut leaves the landscape one untouched.

Where the burned in furniture sits

Two things are drawn over the vertical frame by default and both sit low. Captions are a centred dark pill 120 pixels up from the bottom, capped at 72 percent of the frame width, with 30 pixel type. The corner watermark, when turned on, sits 44 pixels in from the left and 120 up from the bottom at about 72 percent opacity. Both are above the phone's own navigation but inside the exclusion zone Meta publishes, so on Reels in particular they can end up under the caption block.

How it works, in three steps

1. Step 1

   Name the platforms first

   TikTok and Shorts only, or Reels as well? The answer changes your usable height by nearly 300 pixels before you write a word.

2. Step 2

   Generate vertical rather than converting

   Setting the format on the brief means the director designs for a narrow frame from the start, choosing layouts that suit it.

3. Step 3

   Pull anything low upward

   Drag slots on the vertical preview. Those positions are saved for vertical alone, so you can be aggressive without breaking the wide cut.

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

Limits worth knowing

• The vertical canvas is 1080 by 1920, or 2160 by 3840 on the Ultra export. There is no 720 by 1280 option.
• Captions cannot be repositioned. They render at a fixed inset per format.
• Safe zones move between app releases and TikTok's genuinely varies with caption length, so any fixed rectangle is an approximation you should check in the app.
• The 1:1 square canvas exists in the engine but is hidden from both pickers, so a square cut is not one of your options.

Questions people ask

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