How to Fit a Horizontal Video into a Vertical Reel

To fit a horizontal video into a vertical Reel in Studio, import the clip, set the output to 9:16 and choose a frame mode. Fill covers the whole frame and crops the sides, so drag the picture to keep your subject in view. Fit shows the entire shot over a blurred, darker copy of itself. Studio does not track a moving subject, and the MP4 export is free after Google sign-in.

What do Fill and Fit look like on the same shot?

All three pictures are frames from MP4 files we exported. The source is an eight-second, 1280x720 excerpt of a video-call interview released under CC0 by its uploader (Commons file page). It has two people in the left tile, one of them at the very edge, and one speaker in the right tile.

• Left: Fill, untouched. Studio centres the crop, which here lands on the seam between the two tiles. The woman at the left edge is gone.
• Middle: Fill, dragged. We moved the crop onto the right-hand speaker, who now fills the screen.
• Right: Fit. All three people are visible, in a band about a third of the frame's height.

A 9:16 frame cut from a 16:9 picture keeps 31.6% of its width, so Fill always loses most of a wide shot. Fit keeps all of it, but the picture becomes small.

You need a desktop or phone browser, a free Google sign-in for Studio and a local video. Nothing is uploaded: the file stays in your browser tab. Modisign publishes this guide and sells Pro; this example used a free account.

How do you turn a wide clip vertical, step by step?

1. Import the clip. Open Studio and use Import or drop the file. On an empty timeline, imported files go straight onto V1 in the order you pick them, so there is no extra button to press. A file you import later, when V1 already has clips, waits in the Media bin until you click its plus button.
2. Set 9:16 after the clip lands. Studio matches the first clip on an empty timeline: our 1280x720 clip switched the project to 16:9. Click 9:16 under Program. The monitor turns tall and the export becomes 1080x1920.
3. Select the clip and find Frame. Click the clip on V1 and open Edit. Under Frame, Fill is the default.
4. Drag the picture in Program. In Fill, drag sideways to choose which part of the wide shot stays. Our drag moved the horizontal centre from 0.50 to 0.77, onto the speaker. A drag is one undo step.
5. Zoom only if you need a tighter shot. The Zoom slider runs from 100% to 300% and crops further. Our 720-pixel-tall source was already enlarged about 2.7 times to fill 1920 pixels, so zoom makes it softer. Reset returns the centre to the middle and Zoom to 100%; Undo brought our framing back.
6. Or choose Fit. Click Fit to show the whole picture over a blurred, darker copy. Zoom and Reset disappear, and Fit ignores the stored pan and zoom. Switching back to Fill restored our 0.77 centre and 120% zoom.
7. Export and check the ends. Click Export, pick 1080p or 720p and click Export MP4. Both our 1080p files were 1080x1920 H.264 at 30 fps, 240 frames, 8.0 seconds, with stereo AAC at the same level as the source. Check the first and last frames: a subject who moves can leave a Fill crop.

On a phone-sized screen, open Format for the aspect, tap the clip and choose Frame. The sheet has Fill, Fit, Zoom and Reset, with the hint "Drag the picture in Program to reframe it." In Fit it says "Fit shows the whole picture. Switch to Fill to reframe it." A touch drag moved our centre to 0.75. We tested this in an emulated 390x844 touch viewport on a desktop, not a physical phone, and did not export there.

Fill or Fit: which should you choose?

Your shot	Choose	What you get
One person talking in part of a wide frame	Fill, then drag	A full-screen face; the rest of the room is cut
A group, a landscape, a product or a screen where edges matter	Fit	Everything visible, smaller, with blurred bands above and below
A subject who moves across the frame	Fit, or split the clip and frame each part	No subject is lost, but it takes manual work
The subject is centred already	Fill, untouched	Nothing to adjust

These choices are per clip. A Reel can open on a Fill close-up and cut to a Fit wide shot.

Fill, Crop source or Place in output?

Studio has three framing controls in the clip's Edit panel, and they change different things.

Control	What it changes	When to use it
Frame: Fill or Fit, Zoom, drag	How the picture fills its box	Everything in this guide
Crop (phone: Crop source)	Cuts a percentage off the original file's edges before framing	Removing black bars or a watermark from the source
Layout (phone: Place in output)	Where the clip's box sits: Full, Top, Bottom, Left, Right, Picture-in-picture or Custom	Two clips on screen at once

For one full-screen clip, leave Layout on Full and Crop at 0%. We did not export Crop or Layout changes for this guide. For two pictures in one frame, see making a split-screen Reel from two videos.

What can go wrong, and what should you check?

Problem	Check	Fix
Program is still wide after import	The project matched your first clip (16:9)	Click 9:16 under Program, or Format on a phone
Fill cuts the subject in half	An untouched Fill is centred	Drag the picture, or switch to Fit
The subject leaves the frame mid-clip	Fill has one fixed centre per clip	Use Fit, or split the clip and drag each part
Your pan seems lost	Fit ignores pan and zoom	Switch back to Fill; they return
The picture looks soft	Fill already enlarges a wide source	Lower Zoom, or use a higher-resolution source

Studio has no automatic subject tracking. It keeps whatever crop you set for the whole clip.

Do you need Studio for this?

If the video is already on your iPhone, the Photos app can crop it to 9:16: open it, tap Edit, then Crop, and choose a preset ratio (Apple's guide). That gives a Fill-style crop. We read Apple's instructions but did not test them on a phone. Studio adds Fit, several clips, captions and overlays in one export.

What could you add next?

These are suggestions, not tested results:

• Name the speaker. After a Fill close-up, a name tag helps. The free Fitness coach lower third keeps the export free while unchanged; new text makes it Pro.
• Use Fit's bands. A Fit shot leaves blurred space above and below the picture, which can carry a title or captions without covering faces. Check the platform areas in the text safe-zone guide.
• Mix framings. For a wide shot that has photos too, the Fill and Fit advice in making a Reel from photos and videos applies the same way.

Framing, both export qualities and the download are free. Studio still needs a free Google sign-in, and a Pro overlay, overlay motion, expressive caption style or title effect makes an export Pro. This test used one short clip on a desktop; it did not cover a physical phone, a moving subject or an upload to a platform.