Rules checked · 2026-09-16
Landscape video to Shorts: crop or keep the whole picture?
Crop fills a portrait frame by discarding the sides. Contain keeps the whole picture and adds background space. Resizing alone cannot fill a different aspect ratio, preserve every edge and avoid distortion at once.
1280 × 720
720 × 1280
Choose according to the content. A centered speaker may suit crop; slides, gameplay and edge captions often need contain. Preview the beginning, middle and end: a subject can move outside a fixed crop even when the first frame looks correct.
For a 1920×1080 source, a full-height 9:16 crop is theoretically 1080×9÷16 = 607.5 pixels wide. That retains about 31.6% of the original width. Pixel rounding depends on the exporter. Enlarging the output does not restore the removed sides or create source detail.
To contain the same source inside 720×1280, scale by 720÷1920 = 0.375. The picture becomes 720×405, leaving 875 pixels of background height. This is a deliberate composition choice. YouTube already adapts its player to native ratios and generally recommends avoiding baked-in padding.
Select 9:16, compare the modes, then export and open the downloaded file. Check framing, captions, duration, orientation and sound. Work on your own clip and keep its original. A ratio conversion does not automatically find highlights, track a person or guarantee Shorts recommendations.
Why did my subtitles disappear?
Burned-in subtitles are pixels and can be cropped with the edges. Use contain or reposition captions in an editor; a larger export cannot recover cropped text.
Can I just rotate the video?
Rotation exchanges width and height but also turns people and text sideways. It fixes incorrect orientation, not the composition of an already upright landscape clip.