TikTok plays vertical video, so the size to export is 1080 by 1920 pixels in a 9:16 frame. A 720 by 1280 file in the same ratio also works and uploads faster. The ratio matters more than the pixel count: a correctly shaped small file beats a badly cropped large one.
Those figures are the standard full HD size for the ratio the platform publishes as its recommended vertical format. Specifications on social platforms change, so confirm the current number in TikTok's own help pages before a large batch, and treat this page as guidance rather than as a contract. What does not change is the shape of a phone screen. A viewer holds the device upright, the clip fills the width, and everything designed for a horizontal frame has to be either cropped, padded or shrunk to fit.
Most of the confusion around TikTok sizing comes from mixing up three separate questions: what shape to export, what resolution to export, and what the app does to a file that does not match. The answers are short, and none of them require an upload or a paid editing app.
Video Cropper
Crop to 9:16, choose which part of the frame survives, and export at 1080p. Runs in your browser, so the clip is never uploaded.
The three numbers that actually matter
Ratio, resolution and codec are separate decisions, and only the first one is non-negotiable.
| Setting | Value | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Aspect ratio | 9:16 | The shape of the phone screen the clip plays in |
| Resolution | 1080 x 1920 | The full HD size for that ratio, and the usual export target |
| Lighter alternative | 720 x 1280 | Same ratio, smaller file, faster upload, still correct |
Above 1080 pixels on the short side there is nothing to gain. The clip is displayed inside a phone width column, so extra pixels are scaled away before anyone sees them, and they only make the upload slower. Below 720 the picture starts to look soft on a modern phone screen, especially text overlays.
What happens to a landscape clip
Nothing breaks. The video publishes, and the platform centres it in a vertical frame with bars above and below. The problem is how little of the screen the picture occupies.
A 16:9 clip inside a 9:16 frame fills roughly the middle third of the height. Everything a viewer looks at first, the face, the product, the on screen text, arrives at that reduced size, while the caption block and the interface buttons sit in the space that is left. On a feed where the decision to keep watching happens in about a second, that difference is the whole game.
| Source clip | What the viewer sees | Best fix |
|---|---|---|
| 9:16 phone video | Full screen, nothing wasted | Nothing, just export |
| 1:1 square | A band across the middle with bars | Crop to 9:16, or keep it square and accept the bars |
| 16:9 landscape | A short strip, subject small | Crop to the subject, one clip at a time |
| Screen recording, 16:9 | Readable only if the text is large | Crop to the active window, not the whole desktop |
The one case worth leaving alone is a clip where the sides genuinely carry the information, such as a wide gameplay view or a two person interview shot side by side. Forcing that into 9:16 destroys what makes it watchable. Either publish it as it is and accept the smaller picture, or reframe it properly in an editor with a moving crop.
Cropping a widescreen clip to 9:16
The workflow is three steps, and the only judgement call is where the crop sits.
- Add the clip. Drop an MP4, MOV, WebM, MKV or M4V file into the cropper. It is read from your disk into the browser tab, so nothing is uploaded and there is no daily limit to work around.
- Choose 9:16 and the crop position. Centre is right for most footage. Use left or right when the subject stands off to one side, and top or bottom when the interesting part is a face above centre or an object below it. The overlay on the preview shows exactly what will survive.
- Set the output height and export. 1080p gives 1080 by 1920. 720p gives a smaller file that still plays full screen. The export is a standard MP4 with no watermark.
Cropping removes pixels at the edges and re-encodes the rest, so an export takes time in proportion to the clip length. The encoder runs at a quality level that is visually lossless for most footage, but it is still a re-encode, so export once from the original rather than exporting a file that was already exported.
Filling the frame without losing the sides
The alternative to cropping is padding: keep the whole wide frame, shrink it to fit the width, and fill the empty vertical space with something. Editing apps usually offer a blurred copy of the video itself as that fill.
This tool does not do that. The browser pipeline crops and scales, and it has no compositing step to generate a blurred background layer. Saying so is more useful than implying a feature that is not there.
So the choice is between three real options. Crop and lose the sides, which keeps the subject at full size. Pad with a flat colour, which needs an editor but keeps every pixel. Or shoot differently next time, holding the phone upright, which removes the problem permanently. For most talking head, product and tutorial clips, cropping is the answer because the sides were background anyway.
Keep the interface out of the picture
A correctly sized clip can still be ruined by the app's own controls, which sit on top of the video rather than beside it.
On a vertical clip the action buttons run down the right side, the caption and account name occupy the lower left, and a progress bar hugs the bottom edge. Text placed in those zones gets covered. The safe habit is to keep subtitles and any important graphic in the middle band of the frame, with a margin at the bottom, and to avoid placing anything that must be read in the right hand column.
This is also why burned in subtitles need more care on a vertical clip than on a horizontal one. The same font size that works in a 16:9 video sits much closer to the edges here. Our add subtitles tool lets you set the position, so the text can be moved up and away from the caption zone before export.
What this workflow cannot do
Worth knowing before you plan a batch around it.
- It cannot follow a moving subject. The crop is fixed for the whole clip. A person who walks from one side of a wide shot to the other will leave the frame.
- It cannot blur fill. No padded background, no stacked layout, no side by side reframing.
- It cannot add detail. Cropping a 1080p landscape clip to 9:16 leaves a strip about 607 pixels wide, which has to be enlarged to 1080. That is a soft result by definition.
- It cannot undo a re-encode. Each export is one more generation of compression. Keep the original file.
- It cannot make a clip longer or shorter. Use the trimmer first if the clip needs cutting, then crop the trimmed file.
- It does not check platform rules. Duration caps, file size caps and music licensing are the platform's business, not the cropper's.
Getting the shape right before you shoot
The cheapest fix is not a setting, it is a habit. If you know a clip is going to TikTok, record it in 9:16 on the phone, and the entire crop question disappears.
When that is not possible, decide the target before editing rather than after. A landscape clip that will become vertical should be shot with the subject centred and with margins on both sides, because those margins are the part that gets removed. A clip shot edge to edge with the subject near the frame line has nothing to spare.
If you are repurposing the same footage for several platforms, export the vertical version first, then go back to the original for the wide version. Going the other way, from a cropped vertical back to widescreen, means reconstructing the sides you threw away, and no tool can do that.