How to turn horizontal video vertical in Premiere Pro

What happens to a 16:9 shot when you make it 9:16?

You lose about two thirds of the picture. A 9:16 window at full height is 1080 × 9 ÷ 16 = 607.5 px wide on 1080p footage, so 1,312.5 px of the width falls outside the frame.

That number decides everything else. A single speaker in the middle of a wide shot survives the crop. A two-shot with people on the left and right thirds does not: their centres are 640 px apart on a 1,920 px frame, and the window is 607.5 px wide before you allow for shoulders. Text burned into the wide frame is often lost too.

The table below is plain arithmetic. Output sizes assume a 1,080 px short side; use your platform's own spec where it differs.

Two lessons come out of the table. First, any scale above 100% enlarges pixels: at 177.8% the 607.5 px slice is stretched to 1,080 px. Second, UHD footage has room to spare. Its 9:16 window is 1,215 px wide, wider than the 1,080 px output, so a vertical cut from 4K stays sharp. If you know a shoot will be cut vertical, record UHD and frame with the centre third in mind.

How do I use Auto Reframe in Premiere Pro?

Auto Reframe is Premiere's own tool for this job, and it is the first thing to try. Adobe's help index lists it as a topic, but the help text we could read on 3 November 2026 did not include its steps, menu paths or settings. So this page doesn't print them: a menu path that is wrong for your version wastes more time than none. Look the feature up in Adobe's help for the version you run.

One thing that may confuse a search: Adobe's product page now calls the app Adobe Premiere. It says Premiere Pro is "now simply called Adobe Premiere" to cover the desktop and mobile apps. If your splash screen says Adobe Premiere, you're in the right program.

Decide three things before you run it

1. The ratio. Pick the one your platform asks for: 9:16 vertical, 4:5 portrait or 1:1 square. Each one is a different crop, so make one sequence per ratio.
2. Which shots hold two subjects. Mark them now. No single 607.5 px window holds two people on opposite thirds, whatever does the reframing.
3. Where text goes. Titles, lower thirds and captions placed for a wide frame will be cut off or land under the platform's interface. Plan to rebuild them in the vertical sequence.

Check every shot afterwards

• Is the subject's face inside the frame on every cut, including the first and last frames?
• Does the crop jump from side to side between two shots of the same person?
• Did a graphic, logo or burned-in caption get sliced?
• Does anything important sit where a platform's interface will cover it? Turn on safe-zone guides to see.

Fix the misses by hand, as in the next section. Treat any automatic pass as a first draft, not a finished cut.

How do I change a horizontal video to vertical by hand?

Make a new sequence at 1080 × 1920, copy the edit into it, then scale and slide each clip so the subject stays in frame. It takes longer than an automatic pass, but it works in any version that lets you set a custom frame size, and you choose every crop.

1. Duplicate, don't overwrite. Keep the 16:9 sequence as it is. Work on a copy so the wide master is never touched.
2. Set the frame. Create a sequence with a 1080 × 1920 frame and the same frame rate as the footage. YouTube asks for uploads in the frame rate you recorded, so don't change it here.
3. Copy the edit in. Paste the clips from the wide sequence into the vertical one, keeping the cuts.
4. Scale to fill. 1080p clips need 177.8%; UHD clips need 88.9%. Anything less leaves black bars above and below.
5. Slide the window. Move each clip horizontally until the subject sits where you want. You have 1,312.5 px of travel on a 1080p frame.
6. Follow movement. If the subject walks across the frame, keyframe the horizontal position at the start and end of the move, and check the middle.
7. Rebuild text. Delete wide-frame titles and place new ones inside the safe zone for your platform.
8. Watch it on a phone-sized preview. Scrub the whole sequence once at the size people will see it.

Steps 4 and 5 repeat for every clip, which is where most of the time goes. That repetition is the part worth putting on mouse buttons; our guide to Premiere Pro shortcuts on any mouse shows how. For the full vertical workflow, from hook to export, see Reels and Shorts editing in Premiere Pro.

Why is Auto Reframe Sequence greyed out in Premiere Pro?

We can't give you Adobe's reason. The Adobe help text we could read on 3 November 2026 didn't publish the Auto Reframe steps or say why the command might be greyed out. Guessing at a cause would send you down the wrong path, so here is what to do next.

• Check against your version. Note the exact version you run and look up Auto Reframe in Adobe's help for that version.
• Ask Adobe. If the command stays greyed out, Adobe support can say why for your setup.
• Don't wait on it. The manual method above needs nothing but a new sequence, scale and position, so a greyed-out menu item doesn't stop the job.

If you wanted Auto Reframe to change a whole sequence at once, the Sequence Resizer in the mouzeclick workspace resizes a sequence to 9:16 on Windows. It's covered below, with what it does and doesn't do.

Where should text sit in a 9:16 frame?

Inside the platform's safe zone, clear of the areas its app interface covers. The margins differ by platform, so use guides rather than memory.

Studio's Guides tab in mouzeclick has 65 platform presets in 8 groups. Each shows the interface, a safe zone, centre lines, thirds and a grid. As an example, its TikTok preset sets the margins at 130 px top, 484 px bottom, 140 px right and 44 px left. The bottom margin is the one that catches people: a lower third placed where it would sit in a wide frame can land inside those 484 px.

The guides go on the timeline as one clip, "⚠︎ GUIDES (mouzeclick)", with a Magenta label on its own track. Hidden guides are not exported, and the tab warns you while they are showing, so a forgotten guide doesn't end up in the upload. You can save, export and import your own presets for a client's format. The Guides tab runs on Windows and Mac. The full preset list is on our safe zone guides for Premiere Pro page.

What if two people don't fit in one vertical crop?

Stack them. A split screen puts each person in their own half of the 9:16 frame, so neither gets cut off and you don't have to cut back and forth between them.

By hand, that means two copies of the clip, each cropped and positioned to one person. Our split screen in Premiere Pro guide gives the exact crop and position numbers. The same arithmetic applies: each half of a 1080 × 1920 frame is 1080 × 960, a wider window than a full vertical crop, so more of each person fits.

mouzsplit, one of mouzeclick's Premiere Pro extensions, builds the split as a real sequence. It has seven layouts and makes a new frame in 9:16, 1:1, 4:5 or 16:9. Only the bottom copy keeps its sound, so the audio doesn't double up. It runs on Windows and Mac and opens from Window › Extensions. Every item it contains is listed on the mouzsplit feature page.

Use a split for interviews and podcasts with two people in a wide shot. For a single speaker, a plain crop looks cleaner.

Can I resize a whole Premiere sequence to 9:16 in one go?

Yes, on Windows, with the Sequence Resizer in the mouzeclick workspace for Premiere Pro. It sets a sequence to 16:9, 9:16, 1:1, 4:5, 4K, 720p or a size you type.

Open it from Window › Extensions › mouzeclick workspace, then the Motion lab section. The workspace is Windows only; the Mac app does not include it. The Sequence Resizer changes the frame. Choosing what each shot shows is still your call, so plan to work through the clips afterwards as in the manual steps. The workspace page maps every section.

Faster crops, clip by clip

• Fill frame. The Premiere Pro Tool wheel has Fill frame (no black bars), nine anchors and punch-in tools. Open it with F10 or a held right button and flick to the tool. It runs on Windows and Mac once the bridge is installed.
• Studio's Timeline tab. Fill the frame is one press. Zoom every other clip has a "Keep faces in frame" option for talking-head edits. Windows and Mac; see the Studio feature list.
• Punch-ins. AutoZoom, in the Windows-only workspace, writes zoom-in, hold and zoom-out keyframes from each clip's own scale. It adds movement to a static vertical crop; our Premiere Pro auto zoom guide has the defaults.

Working in After Effects instead? mouzeresize turns one comp into 9:16, 1:1, 4:5, 4:3, 16:9, 21:9 or your own size, with layer rules and safe areas, and sends the sizes to the Render Queue. It runs on Windows and Mac. See the mouzeresize feature page.

How should I export a vertical video for YouTube?

Use the same settings YouTube recommends for any upload: MP4, H.264, AAC-LC audio at 48 kHz, and the frame rate you recorded at. YouTube says its standard ratio on a computer is 16:9, and that for vertical or square uploads the player adapts itself to the size of the video.

• Container: MP4, with the moov atom at the front of the file (Fast Start).
• Video: H.264, progressive, High Profile, 2 consecutive B frames, closed GOP of half the frame rate, CABAC, variable bitrate, 4:2:0.
• Audio: AAC-LC (or Opus), 48 kHz; stereo at 384 kbps.
• Frame rate: the one you recorded. YouTube lists 24, 25, 30, 48, 50 and 60 fps as common.
• Bitrate for 1080p SDR: 8 Mbps at 24, 25 or 30 fps; 12 Mbps at 48, 50 or 60 fps.

YouTube's table names resolutions like 1080p and 2160p. The page we checked doesn't say how YouTube applies those to vertical frame sizes, and it didn't cover Shorts length limits. Our Premiere Pro export settings guide walks through the export side in more detail.

Where mouzeclick fits (we make it)

We make mouzeclick, so read this section as ours. It doesn't replace Adobe's Auto Reframe, and we don't claim it picks crops for you. It covers the jobs around the crop: safe zones, two-person shots, resizing a sequence and the repeated clicks.

The panels are extensions that open under Window › Extensions, installed by the app; the extensions page has a card for each. On a Mac, follow the four install steps on the Mac setup page. mouzeclick needs an internet connection while it runs. The trial is 3 days with no card, and every Premiere Pro and After Effects tool works fully. After that, it's one plan with everything included; see pricing.

Questions people ask

Sources

Checked on 2026-11-03. Prices and features change: each link goes to the maker's own page.

1. Adobe Premiere product page: name change, price, membership, mobile app
2. Adobe Creative Cloud plans: Premiere single-app price
3. Adobe Premiere free trial: platforms and refund window
4. YouTube Help: recommended upload encoding settings

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