Rules checked · 2026-09-16
Portrait to landscape video without stretching people
Contain keeps the full portrait picture with background on either side. Crop fills the landscape frame but removes top and bottom content. Stretching width separately makes people look wider.
1280 × 720
720 × 1280
Place a 1080×1920 source inside 1280×720 using contain. The scale is 720÷1920 = 0.375, producing a 405×720 picture. The remaining 875 pixels are background width: approximately 437.5 on each side when centered, subject to pixel rounding.
To fill 16:9 using the source's full 1080-pixel width, the theoretical visible height is 1080×9÷16 = 607.5 pixels, about 31.6% of the original height. A face close-up may work; full-body movement, demonstrations and bottom captions can lose essential information.
Check whether a landscape canvas is necessary. YouTube can display native portrait video. A new 16:9 composition is useful when combining landscape material or deliberately preparing an ordinary upload. Padding is a choice, not a requirement. Black bars already baked into the source remain source pixels.
Preview the highest, lowest and most active moments. Export, open the file and check its 16:9 dimensions, full playback, captions and sound. A two-minute landscape upload can still be an ordinary video; short duration alone does not make it a Short.
Can I avoid cropping, padding and distortion together?
Not through simple resizing when the ratios differ. Choose background space or lost edges, or create additional imagery separately.
Do preview bars mean the exported file has bars?
Not necessarily. The player can add display space outside the video. Inspect the actual file dimensions and distinguish player background from pixels inside the frame.