How to Fit a Landscape Video Into 9:16: Crop or Blurred Edges

By Biraj Paudel, founder of ClipCut · 4 November 2026 · 5 min read

Two ways to make a wide video vertical

A landscape video is wider than it is tall, usually 16:9. A vertical video is 9:16, the opposite shape. You cannot fit one into the other without giving something up, so you have to choose what to give up.

Crop to fill keeps a tall slice of the picture and cuts away the sides. The result fills the whole vertical screen, but anything outside the slice is gone. This works best when the subject is one person, one object or one area that stays roughly in the same place.

Fit keeps the whole picture and puts it in the middle of a tall frame. The empty space above and below is filled either with a blurred, enlarged copy of the same video (Fit, blurred edges) or with plain black (Fit, black bars). Nothing is cut off, but the picture itself takes up only a band across the middle of the screen.

A quick rule of thumb, which is a suggestion and not a rule: crop when the important part is in one spot, fit when the whole width matters, such as a group shot, a wide landscape or a screen with text on both sides.

Step by step in ClipCut

1. Open ClipCut's Crop Video and drop in your clip. The file stays on your device and is not uploaded.

2. In the Format row, pick 9:16. The other shapes are Original, 1:1, 4:5 and 16:9. On a phone, the Format row is under the Shape tab.

3. Choose how the shape is filled: Crop to fill, Fit, blurred edges or Fit, black bars.

4. With Crop to fill, a bright frame appears over the preview and the shaded area shows what will be cut away. Drag the frame left or right until your subject sits inside it. With either Fit option, the preview shows the whole picture inside the tall shape, the way the export will look.

5. If you only need part of the clip, set the start and end on the timeline first: drag the handles, or press ⇤ Start here and End here ⇥ while it plays. The Length readout shows how long the result will be.

6. Press Crop video. When it is done, the result card shows the file size on the Download button. Use Before and After to compare, then download, or press Keep editing to change the framing and export again.

Getting the framing right with Crop to fill

Before you export, press ▶ Play and watch the whole section with the frame in place. The crop frame stays in the same position for the whole clip, so check that your subject does not walk out of it partway through.

If the subject moves across the picture, you have a few options. Trim to the part where they stay in one area, crop shorter sections separately with different framing, or switch to Fit, blurred edges so nothing is lost.

Leave a little room around faces. Vertical apps often place buttons and captions along the bottom and right side of the screen, so a subject jammed against the edge of the frame can end up partly covered.

What the export actually does

Changing the shape always re-encodes the video to an H.264 MP4 with AAC sound, because the picture itself changes. This takes longer than a plain trim and depends on the length of the clip, its resolution and your device.

With Crop to fill, ClipCut keeps the original pixels inside the frame and never stretches them bigger. A 1920 by 1080 landscape clip gives a vertical slice about 608 pixels wide and 1080 tall, so the result has fewer pixels than the original. It looks fine on a phone screen for most uses, but it is softer than footage filmed vertically.

With either Fit option, a 1920 by 1080 clip becomes a 1080 by 1920 vertical video. The whole picture is scaled to fit the width and centred, and the blurred or black area fills the space above and below. The picture is never stretched out of shape.

Adding a line of text and checking the result

Fit, blurred edges leaves empty space above and below the picture, which is a natural place for a short line of text. Type it in the Text box and pick Top, Mid or Bottom, and White, Lemon or Box for the style. The text is one line and stays on screen for the whole clip.

After the export, play the result from start to finish. Check that the subject stays in frame, that the length matches the Length readout, and that the sound plays to the end. ClipCut also checks every export before offering it, and tells you if the result came out empty, too short or will not play in your browser.

If you plan to post it, the shape is what matters to the platform. YouTube's help pages describe Shorts as square or vertical videos up to 3 minutes, and Instagram's help pages allow Reels up to 3 minutes (both checked October 2026). These limits change, so check the platform's own help pages before you rely on them.

Limits and what to do if it fails

Crop to fill removes the edges of the picture. If something important is near the left or right side, it will be cut off. Use a Fit option when you need the whole picture.

The crop frame cannot follow a moving subject. There is one position for the whole export.

Cropping a landscape clip to vertical cannot add detail. The vertical slice uses only part of the original pixels, so it is softer than the original at full screen.

Long 4K clips are slow to re-encode in a browser and can run out of memory on phones. If ClipCut says your browser ran out of memory, close other tabs and try again, export a shorter section, or use a laptop or desktop in a modern browser.

If ClipCut shows a note that the video uses a codec it cannot decode yet (AV1), plain trims still work but cropping and the Fit options will not. Convert the clip to MP4 first, then crop it.

Only reframe footage you filmed yourself or have permission to use.

Next steps after you reframe

If the vertical clip is too large to send, run it through Compress Video and pick a Target size. If you want a square or 4:5 version for a feed post as well, press Keep editing, pick 1:1 or 4:5 in the Format row and export again.