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16:9 to 9:16 crop calculator for vertical video

Enter the resolution of a landscape video and this 16:9 to 9:16 crop calculator gives the largest vertical crop, the size of each panel in a stacked split screen, and how much the crop is enlarged to reach 1080×1920, which tells you how sharp the vertical video will look.

  1. 1

    Enter the source resolution

    Type the width and height of your recording, or pick 720p, 1080p, 1440p or 4K.

  2. 2

    Read the crop sizes

    The vertical crop keeps the full height; the split-screen panel is a 9:8 slice, two of which stack into one 9:16 frame.

  3. 3

    Check the sharpness verdict

    A crop enlarged more than 1.5 times looks soft on a phone. Recording in 4K, or filming closer, fixes it at the source.

Why a 1080p podcast looks soft once it is vertical

A 9:16 crop taken from a 1080p frame is only about 606 pixels wide. To fill a 1080×1920 vertical video it has to be enlarged 1.78 times, so roughly two of every three pixels on screen are invented by scaling. The same crop from a 4K recording is 1214 pixels wide and is reduced instead, which keeps beard, hair and fabric detail.

Split screens are kinder: each person gets a 9:8 panel shown at 1080×960, so a full-height panel from 1080p is reduced, not enlarged. That is one reason two-person podcasts often look sharper as a stacked split screen than as a single moving crop.

Crop questions

What resolution is a 9:16 vertical video?+

The standard is 1080×1920 pixels for TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. Larger files are accepted but are scaled down by the platforms on most phones.

How wide is a 9:16 crop from a 1080p video?+

About 606 pixels at full height (1080 × 9 ÷ 16, rounded to an even number for the encoder). From 4K it is about 1214 pixels.

Is it better to record vertical or crop later?+

Recording vertically gives the sharpest result for one person. For podcasts and interviews filmed for both landscape and vertical, record in 4K so the vertical crops stay sharp.

What is a 9:8 panel?+

Half of a 9:16 frame. Two 9:8 panels stacked vertically make one 9:16 video, which is how split-screen clips show two speakers at once.

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Let the crop follow the speaker

ClipFlap reframes every clip to 9:16 around whoever is talking, or stacks two speakers in a split screen.