Crop any video for TikTok.

TikTok videos play at 1080×1920, 9:16 aspect ratio. Same as Reels and YouTube Shorts.

But the visible zone — the area not covered by TikTok's UI chrome — is smaller. Three regions of the frame have UI on top:

• Top ~150 px: status bar + "Following / For You" tab.
• Right ~140 px column in the bottom half: like, comment, share, profile icons.
• Bottom ~480 px: caption + sound attribution + "+" follow button.

That leaves a roughly 920×1290 safe zone, offset slightly left of center. Important content — faces, on-screen text, key visual — should land inside that zone or risk being covered.

Source: TikTok Creator Portal — Specs and TikTok's in-app upload guidelines.

Subject in the bottom-right. Worst position on the platform — gets covered by both the action column AND the caption block. Center-left of the frame is the safest.

Horizontal source clip. A 1920×1080 horizontal clip cropped to 9:16 keeps only the central 608 pixels of width — about 32% of the original. Off-center subjects vanish. Pre-cropping with subject-aware framing keeps the focal point centered.

60 fps source dropped to 30 fps by TikTok. TikTok re-encodes uploads at 30 fps regardless of source. If your clip relies on 60 fps motion (gameplay, action), expect motion judder after re-encode. Render at 30 fps before upload to control the temporal sampling.

Loud peaks at -3 dB or higher. TikTok's loudness normalization brings everything to roughly -14 LUFS. Hot mixes get pulled down hard, which makes them sound dull next to other clips. Aim for -14 LUFS in the source.

Hook in the first 1.5 seconds. TikTok's for-you feed scroll rewards completion rate. The first frame and first beat are the most important parts of the video.

Caption text in the upper third. Burned-in captions in the safe zone (around 25-40% of the frame height) read on every device. Below that, the caption block can cover them.

Square subject in 9:16. If your source is 1:1 (a square video from a brand asset library), don't letterbox to 9:16 with black bars — it looks like an ad. Either crop tighter into the square, or use a designed background fill that bleeds the subject into the surrounding 9:16 frame.

MP4 + AAC. TikTok accepts most containers but re-encodes everything to MP4 (H.264 + AAC) on the server. Submitting MP4 to start avoids one round of conversion.

1. Drop the clip in. A 16:9 horizontal source.
2. Pick the TikTok preset (1080×1920, 9:16). Crop centers automatically.
3. Drag to reframe. If your subject was off-center horizontally in the source, drag the crop box to put them on the centerline.
4. Trim. Cut to under 60 seconds for organic reach (the algorithm rewards completion). Use the trim tool before export.
5. Export as MP4. Audio is preserved without re-encoding, video re-encodes to H.264.
6. Upload from the TikTok app. Drop the file into the upload composer and post.