How to Reframe Landscape Video to Vertical Shorts in Your Browser

You shot it wide. The camera sat on a tripod or a laptop lid, the frame is 16:9, and the clip is fine for YouTube. Then you want that same moment as a Short, a Reel or a TikTok, and a tall phone frame throws away most of the width. A center crop looks acceptable for a few seconds, until someone leans, a hand enters from the side, or a lower-third title gets sliced in half.

I build Vidmoat, a hosted AI video editor. This is the reframe walkthrough I would hand someone who has one landscape clip and a vertical post to ship: import it, set the canvas to 9:16, reframe around the subject instead of hoping the middle of the picture is enough, check for cut-off text and hands, add captions if the feed will be watched on mute, preview at phone size, then export. The work happens in the browser, on a real timeline you can still edit by hand.

Picture a concrete clip as you read. Forty seconds at a desk: a medium shot of you talking, a cut to the laptop screen, then back to you holding the device up so the label faces the lens. That sequence is enough to show where a single crop works and where it falls apart.

What you are actually changing

16:9 to 9:16 is not a squeeze. Squashing the wide picture into a tall one makes everyone look narrow and wrong. You are choosing a tall window inside the wide frame and moving that window so the important part stays inside it.

On a 1920×1080 clip, a 9:16 window that uses the full height is about 608 pixels wide. That is under a third of the original picture. Everything in the left and right thirds is gone unless you pan the window over to it. A static center crop survives a locked-off shot of one person already sitting in the middle. It fails the moment the subject, their hands, or a graphic lives anywhere else.

Vidmoat's auto reframe is subject-aware, not a blind center crop. When a face is in the shot, the crop follows the face. When there is no face, it follows where the visual weight of the frame sits. Motion is smoothed, so the window does not chase every tiny shift. With two strong subjects, the window can land between them instead of picking one — often the wrong frame, which is why some shots still need you.

Those reframes land as position and scale keyframes on the timeline. You can scrub them, nudge one, or override a single clip.

A hosted editor, not a crop button

In the Vidmoat web app you get a multi-track timeline. The source clip, the reframe keyframes, captions and any later cuts sit on tracks you can scrub. Next to that timeline is a chat with an editing agent. Open it with Cmd/Ctrl + K, describe the reframe, and the edits show up on the tracks. If a crop drifts, you grab it and fix it.

The same projects are available from Telegram. A short clip can go to @vidmoat_bot (keep the underscore) with a sentence about the aspect ratio you want. Browser and bot share projects and credits. Telegram caps bot uploads at 20 MB, so a long landscape recording starts in the browser; a phone-sized clip from your camera roll is fine through the bot.

(If you already drive edits from another agent, the same timeline is available over MCP. This walkthrough does not need that.)

What to have ready

• One landscape clip you mean to post vertically. A single shot, or a short sequence like the desk demo above. Pulling several moments out of a long episode, and stacking two podcast guests, is a different job — I wrote that up in How to Turn a Long Podcast Into Vertical Shorts.
• A destination. 9:16 for Shorts, Reels and TikTok. Vidmoat can also target 1:1 and 4:5. If the same cut has to live as a square or a taller feed post as well, decide that before you burn time perfecting one window, because each ratio is its own crop.
• A phone, or a narrow preview. Side-cut text and clipped hands are obvious on a tall frame and easy to miss on a wide monitor.

Step 1: Import the landscape clip

Open vidmoat.com, create a project, and upload the file. Wait until it finishes processing before you judge the frame. Scrubbing a half-ready clip makes the crop look worse than it is.

Play the clip once while it is still 16:9, and note what must survive the tall window:

• The face, or the object the shot is about
• Hands, products, or props that carry the point
• On-screen text, lower thirds, logos, and end cards
• Any cut where the subject jumps from one side of the frame to the other

On the desk demo, that list is: your face in the medium shot, the words on the laptop screen, and the product label in the last shot. If a title spans the full width of the 16:9 frame, plan to redo that title for vertical. Cropping it will not save it.

Step 2: Set the canvas to 9:16

In Vidmoat the aspect ratio is not an export afterthought. It lives in Project Settings, from the three-dot More tools menu: 16:9, 9:16, 1:1, 4:5, 4:3 and 21:9, plus a 1080p or 4K tier. The export follows the canvas. Set 9:16 before you start framing, or you will be judging a wide preview and exporting a tall one.

Switching the canvas does not invent a good crop. The wide picture now sits in a tall frame, and the sides fall outside it. That is the moment it is tempting to accept whatever is already centered. Look at it before you accept it. On the desk demo, a center crop might hold your face in the medium shot and still chop the laptop screen so the sentence you are pointing at is gone.

Step 3: Decide whether a center crop is enough

A static center crop is enough when one subject already sits near the middle for the whole clip, they do not walk or lean hard, hands and props stay in that middle third, and no title or logo lives in the side thirds.

A locked-off toast — speaker in the center, no graphics — can be a center crop. A product demo, a walk-and-talk, a two-shot, a slide with text in the corners, or a person who gestures needs the window to move — or a different window on each shot. If you are unsure, assume the center crop is wrong and check the edges.

Step 4: Reframe around the subject

In the AI console:

Reframe this clip to 9:16. Follow the subject. Keep headroom, and do not clip their hands. Hold the frame still when they are still.

Auto reframe in Vidmoat targets 9:16, 1:1, 4:5 and 16:9. Framing is subject-aware, and you can override it per clip when you want control. On a face, expect the window to track the face. On a shot with no face — a street, a product on a table, a screen — expect it to follow the busy part of the picture, which is sometimes the wrong part. The laptop shot in the desk demo is that case. The bright screen may pull the crop, while the sentence you care about sits off to one side. Watch those shots yourself.

You can also frame by hand. Select the clip, open Motion in the Inspector, scale the footage up until the tall frame is filled, and keyframe position so the subject stays inside. Manual keyframes are the right tool when you already know the framing and do not want a tracker to guess. Cutting and keyframes by hand do not spend AI credits. An agent reframe does.

Headroom matters as much as tracking. Eyes sit more comfortably with space above them than jammed against the top. Leave room at the bottom too. Shorts, TikTok and Reels cover the lower area, and often the right edge, with usernames and buttons. A face parked on that edge will fight the interface no matter how accurate the track was.

Step 5: Reframe shot by shot when one window cannot hold the sequence

One smooth track across the whole timeline is the wrong goal if the edit is really several shots. Rework a span on its own when:

• Scale changes. A wide shot and a close-up do not share a zoom. The scale that fits one ruins the other.
• The subject travels. A pan, or someone walking across the frame, walks out of a single still position.
• Two people share the wide frame. The crop can sit in the gap and hand you two half-faces. Choose one person for that shot, or cut to each in turn.
• The point is not a face. A slide, a screen recording, or a button in the corner will not be what a face track chooses. Position that shot yourself.
• The title was designed for 16:9. Rebuild it inside the tall frame. Cropping a widescreen title leaves half a word.

On the desk demo that means three decisions, not one. Medium shot: follow your face, with headroom, and room at the bottom. Laptop shot: frame the lines on the screen, even if your shoulder is all that remains of you. Product shot: put the label and the hand that holds it inside the window, and let the side of the room go.

Per clip, override the framing on the timeline. In chat you can point at a span:

On the shot from 0:18 to 0:27, frame the laptop screen so the headline stays readable. Do not center on my shoulder.

Then scrub that span. The automatic pass is faster. Checking each shot is what makes the vertical a real edit.

Step 6: Check for cut-off text, hands and edges

Play the 9:16 version from the start and pause on anything that looks tight.

• Faces. Chin, forehead, and the ear on the side they turn toward. Clipping the chin on every nod means the crop is too tight.
• Hands. If the gesture is the point, the hand has to finish inside the frame. A sliced hand reads as a mistake.
• Burned-in text and lower thirds. A cut-off word means the crop is wrong or the graphic has to move. Half a logo is worse than no logo.
• Screens and whiteboards. The line they point at has to stay in frame with the hand.
• Hard jumps. If the window leaps across the picture on a cut, set a new still frame on the incoming shot so it feels like an edit.

Fix those keyframes before you add anything else. Captions on top of a bad crop hide the problem until someone watches on a phone.

Step 7: Add captions if the post needs them

Captions are optional here, and worth it when people watch muted. Keep lines short, above the platform's lower UI, and clear of the face you just kept in frame. After the reframe is stable:

Add short captions above the lower third, clear of the face.

Read them once against the picture. A layout that was comfortable on 16:9 can now cover the subject, because the frame is narrower. Tightening a take, caption timing and the rest of a talking-head edit are covered in How to Edit a Talking-Head Video in Your Browser. Settle the frame before you restyle cues.

Step 8: Preview at phone size, then export

Play the cut in a tall preview (F toggles fullscreen). A wide monitor flatters framing mistakes the feed will not.

Before you trust the render: the subject is still inside the frame after every cut and gesture, no words or hands are clipped, captions (if any) sit clear of the face and the bottom UI, and the window stays calm when the subject is still.

Then render an MP4 from the project. From Telegram, ask @vidmoat_bot for the render and the file comes back in the chat.

What it costs on Vidmoat, briefly: Hobby is free — 720p exports, a small watermark and a two-second end card — enough to learn the reframe. Creator is $19/month for 4K with no watermark. Studio is $49/month. Team is $29 per seat per month, three seats minimum. Enterprise is custom. Current details are on the pricing page.

Watch that file once on the phone you will post from.

What this walkthrough is not

It is one landscape clip, reframed for a vertical feed — not a full talking-head edit, and not pulling several moments out of an hour-long recording. It is also not a promise that automatic framing will be right on every shot.

Vidmoat is young, and a small operation compared with the bigger players. The tracker gets a locked-off face a long way. Two-shots, graphics and busy B-roll still need your eye, on purpose, on a timeline you can edit.

FAQ

Why does a center crop cut my subject off?
A 9:16 window on 1080p-high footage is about 608 pixels wide. If the subject leaves that middle slice, they leave the Short. Move the window.

Does Vidmoat follow faces?
When a face is in frame, auto reframe follows it and smooths out tiny shifts. With no face, it follows the visual weight of the shot. Two competing subjects can pull the crop into the gap between them, so override two-shots.

When should I reframe shot by shot?
When scale, subject, or the point of the shot changes: wide to close-up, a pan, a second person, a slide, a screen, a title card. Set the framing per clip instead of trusting one pass to average them.

Where is 9:16, and can I fix a bad frame by hand?
Project Settings, from the three-dot More tools menu. The export uses that canvas. A bad frame is keyframes you can move in the Inspector, or a shot you can hand back to the agent.

Is the free plan enough to try this?
Hobby is enough to import, reframe, preview and export at 720p with a small watermark and a two-second end card. Creator is the step up when you want 4K and a clean file under your name.

If you have a 16:9 clip that needs to live as a Short, open vidmoat.com and run this on the real file — or send a short one to @vidmoat_bot and ask for a 9:16 reframe. Then tell me which shot the crop still gets wrong. That is how the framing gets better.

Fred Abila builds Vidmoat.