Guide·Sep 14, 2026·6 min

How to Make Vertical Clips From a Horizontal Video

To make vertical clips from a horizontal video, an editing tool needs to do more than crop the frame down to a 9:16 rectangle: it needs to track the subject and keep them centered as they move, since a fixed crop on a wide shot will frequently cut off the speaker's face whenever they shift position. This is usually called auto reframe or subject tracking, and it runs automatically as part of generating a clip. The source video's original aspect ratio, landscape, square, or anything else, doesn't need to be resolved manually first.

Why a Simple Center Crop Doesn't Work

The most basic way to turn a horizontal video vertical is to crop a tall rectangle out of the middle of the frame and call it done. This works only as long as the subject stays in the center of the original shot for the entire clip, which is rarely true. A speaker who leans, gestures, walks, or simply isn't perfectly centered in the original horizontal framing ends up partially or fully cropped out in a fixed center crop, sometimes for the whole clip.

This is the most common visible flaw in poorly converted vertical video: a speaker's head cut off at the top of frame, or a shot that's technically vertical but has the subject awkwardly off to one side.

How Subject Detection and Tracking Solves It

Auto reframe works by detecting where the subject is in each frame and adjusting the crop to follow them, rather than locking the crop to one fixed position for the whole clip. As a speaker moves within the original horizontal frame, the vertical crop moves with them, keeping them roughly centered throughout. This happens automatically, without needing to manually set keyframes or adjust the crop by hand for different parts of the video.

The result is a vertical clip that behaves the way footage shot vertically from the start would: the subject stays framed regardless of how they move.

What Happens When There's More Than One Person in Frame

Multiple people in the original horizontal shot complicate reframing, since a vertical crop is narrower than a horizontal one and often can't fit everyone at once. Tools optimized around a single main speaker generally track whichever person is speaking at a given moment, following the active speaker rather than trying to keep every person in frame simultaneously. This works well for interview or conversational formats where speaking turns are relatively clear, and it's worth checking how a given tool behaves with multiple people before relying on it for that format specifically.

Framing Choices Worth Checking Before You Post

Auto reframe handles the core problem, but it's worth a quick review pass on finished vertical clips, particularly checking that captions or on-screen graphics from the original video didn't end up positioned outside the new vertical frame, and that fast subject movement didn't produce any jarring crop jumps. These are edge cases rather than the norm, but they're the kind of thing worth a final look before posting.

ChatClip's Auto Reframe

ChatClip's auto reframe uses subject detection and tracking to keep the speaker centered in the vertical frame, working from any source aspect ratio.

FREQUENTLY ASKED

Will a vertical clip cut off part of my video?
Not with auto reframe. A fixed center crop can, since it doesn't move with the subject, but subject tracking adjusts the crop as the speaker moves to keep them in frame.
Does this work if the camera moves during recording?
Yes. Subject tracking follows the person, not a fixed point in the frame, so camera movement doesn't break the reframe the way it would with a static crop.
What if there are two people in the shot?
Tools optimized for a single main speaker typically follow whoever is speaking at a given moment rather than keeping every person in frame at once.
Do I need to reframe the video myself first?
No. Auto reframe runs automatically as part of generating the clip, working from the original aspect ratio without manual adjustment.