Today, creators and digital marketers need to make a lot of content. From Instagram to Facebook to TikTok, you can use many social platforms to maximize your reach. But creating unique content for every single post can quickly lead to burnout. One way to combat this is to repurpose your video content across social platforms. For instance, a video you post to YouTube can also be posted to Instagram Reels or TikTok. In this article, I’ll go over the basics of aspect ratios for different platforms and how to change the aspect ratio of your video in Premiere Pro.

Understanding aspect ratios

The first thing you need to know when repurposing content is that different platforms require different media aspect ratios. Some work best with horizontal content. Others are optimized for vertical viewing (like content you would typically watch while scrolling on your phone.)

Videos uploaded to YouTube should be horizontal to fit the YouTube player. Videos uploaded to Facebook can also be horizontal (although preference is starting to shift to vertical.)

For Instagram feed posts, you can post horizontal videos, but since the majority of people who use Instagram view it from a smartphone that’s being held vertically, a horizontal video will only fill up a small fraction of the already small screen. So a vertical video is preferred.

Instagram Stories, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Facebook Stories, IGTV and TikTok are all vertically formatted. For this reason, it’s best to convert native horizontal video to vertical format so it fills the entire vertical viewing screen.

Reformatting horizontal video to vertical video

If you have a horizontal YouTube video and want to post it vertically on other social media channels, it can be a bit tricky. When a video is repurposed for vertical viewing, it needs to be heavily cropped to fill the frame. That means cutting quite a lot from the left and right sides.

How to change aspect ratio in Premiere Pro

To do this, I typically convert my horizontal footage to vertical by creating a vertical sequence of 1080×1920 inside Premiere Pro. 

1. First, right-click and select New Item > Sequence. Or select File > New > Sequence from the top navigation.

2. Then, change the frame size to your desired vertical aspect ratio. I’ll be using 1080 x 1920, but you can get a full list of aspect ratios for every social media platform in our Ultimate Video Marketing Toolkit. Once you enter in your new Frame Size, select OK to create your new sequence.

3. In your new sequence, navigate to the Effect Controls panel. Then zoom into the footage until it fills the vertical frame using the Scale setting.

4. From there, I move each clip left or right to align the best part of the footage in each clip so that it looks good using the Position setting.

5. After that, I export the footage at the same 1080×1920 vertical resolution.

Once the video is converted to a vertical resolution, I can use that same video file for any other platform that would benefit from vertical video.

Tips for repurposing your videos

YouTube

Vertical videos are growing increasingly popular for most social media platforms since most smart devices primarily use a vertical orientation. And YouTube is no exception. It’s still primarily known as the longer-form video platform where horizontal video makes sense. Especially since a lot of people still view YouTube content from their computer or TV. 

But now that they’ve made YouTube Shorts an avenue for monetization, it’s a good idea to plan your shoots or choose your footage with vertical in mind. With short-form video like YouTube Shorts, it’s always best to keep up with current social media video trends to maximize your engagement.

Instagram

For Instagram Stories, they allow each post to be 1 minute long, and Instagram will split up videos into 15-second clips automatically up to a certain length. Instagram Reels are currently capped at 90 seconds, though that may change in the future to keep pace with TikTok.

TikTok

For TikTok, videos can be up to 10 minutes in length. However, for a couple reasons, I would recommend keeping them much shorter. Songs available on the platform are only usable up from about 15 seconds to one minute in most cases. And shorter videos tend to perform better within the TikTok algorithm. If you have a longer video you want to repurpose for TikTok, think about how you can shorten it, hop on a trend, or use a snippet.

The vertical video trend is here to stay as more and more people move away from desktop computers to smart phones. The popularity of Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and TikTok all promote the use of vertical videos and short form video marketing, which only seems to be growing in popularity. Especially as more people turn to social media as a search engine.

A vertical video editing shortcut

If you’re looking for a simple video editing app to help you repurpose video content, Maker or Adobe Premiere Rush is a great choice. And of course, any professional video editing app such as Premiere Pro will also allow you to edit your content with a lot of options.

Specifically, using the auto-reframe feature in Premiere Pro CC can automatically change your footage to various frame sizes quickly. That’s going to save you a lot of time!

How to use auto reframe in Premiere Pro

1. Right-click your horizontal sequence in Premiere Pro’s Project panel window and select Auto Reframe Sequence.

2. Then choose a vertical aspect ratio. In our case, I’m working with 1080p footage, which has a 16:9 aspect ratio, so I will select Vertical 9:16.

3. Premiere Pro will then analyze the footage and select the best part of the image to automatically reframe!

In our example, Premiere automatically chose to center the puppy in the frame, which is exactly what I would have done.

Final thoughts

Repurposing videos can be time-consuming, but there are a few simple ways to do it. You just need to learn what format works best for the platforms you are using and plan ahead. Once you get the hang of it, you can start repurposing content across all your different social media platforms.

If you’re looking for ways to elevate your videos, check out our post on the top 10 Premiere Pro social media templates that you can find in the Storyblocks library. With a Storyblocks subscription, you can unlock unlimited downloads of over 2 million high-quality, royalty free stock footage clips, exclusive music tracks, Premiere Pro templates, and more.

Want to see more from Will Bartlett? Follow Alli and Will on YouTube and Instagram.

Editor’s Note: This post has been updated to include additional information. It was originally posted on June 8, 2020.