Crop any clip or image to an Instagram Reel.

Instagram Reels render at 1080×1920 pixels, 9:16 aspect ratio. That's the same shape as Stories, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts — submitting one clip at this size works across all four surfaces with only metadata differences.

But the visible area inside a Reel is smaller than the full 1080×1920. Two zones get covered by the Instagram UI:

• Top ~250 px: status bar + author handle + "Reel" label.
• Bottom ~340 px: caption + like/comment/share buttons + audio attribution.

That leaves roughly 1080×1330 in the safe-content zone, centered vertically. If your subject lands inside that band, it stays visible regardless of caption length or interaction overlays.

Source: Meta — Reels best practices and Instagram's in-app Reels editor guidelines.

Subject at the bottom. Anything in the bottom 340 pixels gets covered by the caption and interaction buttons. Faces, captions burned in, key text — all hidden behind UI chrome.

Wrong source aspect. Cropping a 16:9 horizontal clip to 9:16 means losing 75% of the frame width. If the subject was off-center horizontally, the auto-center crop will miss it. Pre-cropping with a subject-aware tool keeps the focal point centered.

Sub-1080 width. Instagram won't reject your upload at 720 wide, but it stores at the source resolution and re-renders for everyone — including high-DPI phones that show the loss. 1080 wide is the floor for sharp playback in 2025+.

Letterboxing on a square video. Posting a 1:1 video to Reels gives you black bars on top and bottom. The Reel still plays, but it looks lazy in the feed. Crop or pad with a designed background instead.

Subject in the upper-middle third. Frame so the visual focal point sits between roughly 30% and 60% of the height — squarely in the safe zone, comfortably above the caption block.

Hook in the first 1.5 seconds. Reels autoplay muted, and the average viewer decides whether to keep watching in under 2 seconds. The thumbnail (which Instagram picks from the first frame by default) is half the battle — make frame 1 a strong frame.

Burn-in captions. Most Reels are watched muted. Burned-in captions in the safe zone (not the bottom UI overlay) read on every device. Position around 60-80% of the frame height.

MP4 over MOV. Instagram accepts both, but MP4 (H.264 + AAC) re-renders cleaner on their server-side encode. MOV often gets a quality hit in the conversion.

1. Drop the clip in. A typical 16:9 horizontal clip from a phone or screen recording.
2. Pick the Reel preset (1080×1920, 9:16). The crop box auto-centers and maintains the 9:16 frame.
3. Drag to reposition. If the speaker is left of center, drag the crop right so they land in the middle of the Reel.
4. Trim if needed. Reels work best at 7-15 seconds for completion rate, up to 90 seconds for substance. Use the trim tool to cut the clip down before export.
5. Export as MP4. Audio is preserved without re-encoding, video re-encodes to H.264.
6. Upload from the Instagram app. Drop the file into the Reel composer and post.