Exporting One Edit for Horizontal, Square and Vertical Screens

Horizontal suits a website, a projector at the next meeting, or a screen in a lobby. Square sits comfortably in a social feed where viewers scroll past with the sound off. Vertical fills a phone held upright and works best for a single short moment rather than a full recap. You rarely need all three for every project, so ask first where the audience will actually see it.

Let the purpose and the target length guide that choice. A ninety-second recap for people who missed the event usually earns a horizontal master and perhaps a square cut. A fifteen-second teaser made of one strong applause moment or one clear remark is a natural vertical candidate. Making a version nobody will open only adds files to manage.

Write the intended shapes down at the start of the project, next to the length you are aiming for. It takes a minute and saves you from exporting out of habit rather than need.

Changing the frame is not a simple crop. When you move from wide to square or tall, the edges of the picture disappear, and so can a speaker standing off-centre or a sign that explains the scene. Go through the sequence clip by clip and reposition each shot so the important subject stays inside the new frame.

Pay particular attention to faces and hands. A person gesturing while they talk can lose half their meaning if the gesture falls outside the crop. If a shot simply cannot be reframed, swap it for another angle of the same moment from your authorised footage, or hold it wide with a calm blur behind.

Keep captions inside the safe area as well. Text placed near the bottom edge of a horizontal frame may sit under an app's buttons on a phone. Move it up, enlarge it slightly, and check that each line still matches what is being said at that moment.

For most sharing, an MP4 file with the common H.264 video codec and AAC audio plays almost everywhere. Match the frame rate to your source rather than converting it, since a mismatch can make movement look slightly jerky. Choose a resolution that fits the shape: full high definition for horizontal, and a similarly sharp setting for square and vertical.

Bitrate is where people either waste space or lose quality. A moderate, steady bitrate is usually enough for a talking-head recap, while footage with fast motion, such as a crowd or a performance, benefits from a higher one. Export a short test section first and look at it closely before committing to the full render.

Keep an eye on audio loudness too. A recap that jumps from a quiet speaker to loud applause makes viewers reach for the volume. Level the dialogue so it sits clearly above the music and crowd, and use the same level in every version.

A preview window on your editing screen tells you very little about how a video feels in someone's hand. Copy each exported file to a phone and watch it from start to finish at normal arm's length, with the sound both on and off. This is the quickest way to catch a caption that is too small or a cut that feels abrupt.

Look for four things in particular: whether the first second grabs attention, whether the text can be read without squinting, whether the speaker's face stays in view, and whether the ending lands cleanly rather than cutting off mid-word. Fix what you find in the master, then re-export only the versions affected.

If you can, ask one person who was not involved in the edit to watch it and tell you what the video was about. If their answer matches your intent, the delivery is doing its job. If not, the problem is rarely the export settings.

Once the versions are final, name them so nobody has to open a file to know what it is. A pattern such as event-name, then shape, then version number, then a plain note like final works well, and it sorts neatly in a folder. Avoid names like final-final or new-latest, which become meaningless within a week.

Keep a small folder that holds the exports, the captions file if you made one separately, and a short text note listing the intended use of each version. Whoever receives the files can then post the right one in the right place without asking you.

Finally, keep the project file and the source footage together and untouched. If someone asks for a shorter cut next season, you can start from the master rather than from nothing, and you will still have the original recordings with their permissions noted beside them.