YouTube Shorts, Reels and TikTok video specs

One export that works on all three

The good news about short-form specs is that the three big platforms have converged. A vertical 9:16 video at 1080x1920 pixels, exported as an MP4 with H.264 video and AAC audio, uploads cleanly to YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and TikTok. If you make one master at that size and keep text and faces inside the shared safe area, you can post the same file everywhere and only change the post caption, title and hashtags

Higher resolutions upload fine, but the apps re-encode everything and most viewers watch on a phone screen, so 1080x1920 is the practical target. Exporting smaller than 1080 wide is the thing to avoid: it looks soft once the platform compresses it again

Length limits, and why they keep changing

Length is the spec that moves most. YouTube extended Shorts from 60 seconds to up to 3 minutes in October 2024. Instagram raised the Reels limit to 3 minutes in January 2025. TikTok allows uploads of up to 10 minutes in the app, with longer uploads available through some paths. Each platform has changed these numbers before and will again, so check the in-app limit when you plan longer clips

The limit is not a target. Most clips that perform well on all three platforms are under a minute, often 20 to 45 seconds, because a short clip that people watch to the end and replay sends a stronger signal than a long one they abandon halfway. Use the extra length for stories that need it, not as a default

Safe zones: where the interface covers your video

Each app draws its interface on top of your video. On all three, the bottom of the frame holds the account name, the post caption and the audio or music label, and the right edge holds the like, comment, share and other buttons. Reels and TikTok also put tabs or a search bar along the top. Anything you place under those elements, whether a caption, a face or a product, is partly hidden

As approximate guidance for a 1080x1920 frame: keep important content out of the top 250 pixels or so, the bottom 350 to 420 pixels, and the right 120 pixels. That leaves a central area roughly 900 pixels wide and 1250 pixels tall that is clear on every platform. Put captions in the middle third of the screen, slightly below centre, and keep faces in the upper-middle part of the frame

Instagram adds one more wrinkle: in the profile grid and some feed placements, Reels are shown cropped closer to 4:5 or 3:4. Keep the key subject near the vertical centre so the crop does not cut it off, and choose a cover frame that still reads when cropped

Captions and audio

Many people watch short-form video with the sound off, so burned-in captions matter on every platform. Use word-level timing so captions stay in sync, a heavy font with an outline or box, and no more than two or three short lines at a time. Keep audio loud enough to compete with the clips around it but without clipping; dialogue should sit clearly above any music

If you post the same clip to all three platforms, export a clean master and avoid re-uploading files that carry another app's watermark: Instagram has said in the past that it may show less of content with visible watermarks from other platforms

Getting long videos into this format

Most source footage is 16:9, so turning it into a 9:16 clip means cropping, and a fixed centre crop rarely works. shitShorts reframes to 9:16 by following the active speaker, with voices matched to faces, switches to split tiles when two people share a moment, and follows the ball and action on sports footage. Word-level animated captions are placed inside the safe areas described above

Every clip is an editable project in the browser Studio, and exports are MP4 files ready for all three platforms. You can also schedule the same clip to YouTube Shorts, TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook Reels, LinkedIn, X, Threads and Pinterest with a different caption on each. Free exports are 720p with a small watermark; the Clipper plan at $10 a month exports 1080p without one

Before you post, preview the clip on a phone rather than a desktop monitor. It is the quickest way to catch captions that sit under a button, a face cut off at the top, or text that is too small to read at arm's length