--- title: "Vertical Reframe: Convert 16:9 Video to 9:16 for TikTok, Reels & Shorts" url: https://ireplay.tv/tools/vertical-reframe markdown_url: https://ireplay.tv/tools/vertical-reframe.md description: "Turn landscape footage into vertical clips. It finds every scene cut, and the 9:16 crop you place on each shot stays put instead of drifting. Free, no account." type: tool site: iReplay.tv pricing: "Free, no account required. 100 minutes of generated video; free clips carry a small watermark, removed by bringing your own API key." keywords: - "convert 16:9 to 9:16" - "landscape to vertical video" - "auto reframe video" - "repurpose footage for tiktok" - "turn long videos into shorts" - "batch convert video to vertical" - "opusclip alternative" - "crop video for tiktok without cutting off the subject" - "vertical video from broadcast archive" - "reframe video for reels" - "9:16 video converter" - "scene cut detection" - "1080x1920 video" - "webvtt subtitles" - "free vertical video maker" - "archive to shorts" - "horizontal to vertical video" --- # Vertical Reframe: turn 16:9 footage into 9:16 clips for TikTok, Reels and Shorts iReplay.tv Vertical Reframe converts landscape video into vertical clips without handing the framing decision to a black box. It reads the file, finds every scene cut, and shows you each shot with a 9:16 crop window already positioned on it. You move the window where it belongs, and it stays there for the whole shot. Free, no account, and every clip comes out at 1080×1920 H.264 with WebVTT subtitles. ## Why the crop holds still instead of panning A 9:16 crop of a 16:9 frame keeps only about 31% of the width, so every reframing tool has to answer the same question: which 31%. Most answer it by tracking motion and panning to follow it. On real footage that signal is far noisier than it sounds. Measured on a 12-minute news broadcast of 141 shots, the motion centroid wandered a median of 33% of the frame width within a single shot, because on a talking head it follows a moving mouth and then jumps to whoever moved last. A crop driven from that chases noise, and a pan that chases noise reads worse than no pan at all. So the default here is to hold: the window you place is the window that renders. The motion signal is still used, but for what it is actually good at, which is pre-positioning the window before you look at it. If a shot genuinely travels, you switch on "follow the action" for that shot alone. ## Shots are not clips Conflating the two is the usual mistake. Shots are the scene cuts, and each one gets its own framing, so a cut to a different composition does not inherit the last one. Clips are the vertical files you end up with, and their edges always land on a scene cut, never mid-shot, because a clip that opens half way through a camera move is the clearest sign of an automated job. You can make several clips from one source and queue the next while the last is still rendering. The expensive pass, reading the video, happens once, so the tenth clip costs no more of it than the first. ## Shots that cannot be cropped Some shots have no valid crop: a title spanning the frame, a wide establishing shot, a chart, a crowd, a sports field. Cropping those throws away more than it keeps, so the crop width is adjustable from a tight 9:16 slice all the way to the whole frame, and anything wider than the slice is letterboxed onto a blurred enlargement of the same picture rather than cut. The analysis proposes which shots need this; you can override it either way. ## Two ways to decide the framing Without an API key you frame each shot yourself and the crop holds. With your own key, a vision model picks the subject shot by shot and the crop follows it, and the watermark on free clips comes off. Anthropic, OpenAI and Google are supported along with around twenty OpenAI-compatible providers; the key runs your job and is deleted when it finishes. The rendering runs on our machines in both cases, so a key pays for the model rather than the compute. ## Built for archives, not just for creators Broadcasters, channel operators, event producers and VOD libraries hold thousands of hours of 16:9 that cannot go to TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Snapchat Spotlight or RedNote without reframing, and reframing by hand is a shot-by-shot job. Sixty seconds or less clears every one of those platforms at once. The clips also come out at exactly the top rung of the portrait ladder used by [My TV Channel](https://ireplay.tv/tools/my-tv-channel), so an archive can be turned into a 24/7 vertical channel with no upscaling and no re-authoring. Checking a stream rather than re-cutting one? The [Streaming Analyzer](https://ireplay.tv/tools/stream-analyzer) reads an HLS or DASH manifest against best practice, and the [Video Quality Analyzer](https://ireplay.tv/tools/video-quality-analyzer) opens the frames themselves. To go the other way and create video from scratch, see the [AI Ad Generator](https://ireplay.tv/tools/ad-generator). This tool was built by [Sylvain Corvaisier](https://ireplay.tv/hire-me/sylvaincorvaisier), a streaming and video engineer with 20 years in the industry. iReplay.tv is run by a collective of streaming and broadcast engineers; you can also [hire streaming and broadcast specialists](https://ireplay.tv/media-streaming-broadcast-talents). ## What it does - Automatic scene-cut detection, with clip edges snapped to cuts - A 9:16 crop window pre-positioned on every shot, which you can move - The framing you choose is HELD for the shot rather than panning - Optional per-shot "follow the action" for footage where the subject travels - Adjustable crop width, from a tight 9:16 slice to the whole frame on a blurred background - Several clips from one source, queued while the last one renders - WebVTT subtitles generated for every clip, language auto-detected - 1080x1920 H.264 output, ready for TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts - Bring your own API key so a vision model picks the subject per shot - Clips can be published as a 24/7 vertical channel ## Pricing Free, no account required. 100 minutes of generated video; free clips carry a small watermark, removed by bringing your own API key. ## Questions **How do I convert a 16:9 video to 9:16 without cutting off the subject?** A 9:16 crop of a 16:9 frame keeps only about 31% of the width, so the question is always which 31%. This tool splits the video at its scene cuts first, then shows you each shot with a 9:16 window already positioned on it. You drag the window where it belongs and it stays there for that shot. Because every shot is framed separately, a cut to a different composition gets its own framing rather than inheriting the last one. For a shot where no crop works at all, such as a full-width title card or a wide establishing shot, you can widen the window up to the whole frame and the result is letterboxed on a blurred background instead of cut. **Does the crop drift or pan around on its own, like other auto-reframe tools?** Not unless you ask it to. By default the crop is held exactly where you put it for the whole shot, so what you see in the picker is what renders. That is deliberate: motion tracking on real footage is noisy, and on a talking head the energy signal follows a moving mouth and then jumps to whoever moved last, which produces a crop that chases noise. A pan that chases noise looks worse than no pan. If a particular shot genuinely travels, a cyclist crossing frame or a football move, you switch on "follow the action" for that shot alone. **Is this a free alternative to OpusClip?** It solves the reframing half of the same problem, and it is free with no account: 100 minutes of generated video, with a small watermark on free clips that is removed when you bring your own API key. The difference is control. OpusClip and similar tools decide the framing for you and pick clips by transcript. Here you see the scene cuts and choose the framing on every shot yourself, which is the part those tools do not expose. What it does not do is pick clips semantically from what is said; clip selection here is based on where the action is, and you choose the range. **Do I need an account or an API key?** Neither. Upload a file, or paste a URL or a YouTube link, and it works. An API key is optional and changes one thing: instead of you framing each shot, a vision model picks the subject shot by shot and the crop follows it. The key also removes the watermark. Anthropic, OpenAI and Google are supported, along with about twenty OpenAI-compatible providers, and the key runs your job and is deleted when it finishes. The rendering runs on our machines either way, so a key pays for the model, not the compute. **What format are the clips, and are subtitles included?** Every clip is 1080x1920 H.264 with AAC audio, which is what TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Snapchat and RedNote all want, and it needs no further conversion. A WebVTT subtitle file is generated for each clip with the language detected automatically, and you can download it alongside the video or play it in the preview. **Can I make several clips from one video?** Yes, and you do not have to wait between them. Choose a stretch, queue it, and carry on picking the next one while the first renders; the clips build up in a list as they land. The analysis pass runs once for the whole source, so making the tenth clip costs no more reading of the video than the first. **Can the vertical clips become a 24/7 vertical channel?** Yes. The clips come out at 1080x1920, which is exactly the top rung of the portrait rendition ladder used by My TV Channel, so they need no upscaling or re-authoring to be played out as a continuous vertical channel. That is why the tool exists as much as social posting does: an archive of 16:9 material cannot fill a vertical channel until something reframes it. --- Source: [Vertical Reframe: Convert 16:9 Video to 9:16 for TikTok, Reels & Shorts](https://ireplay.tv/tools/vertical-reframe) on iReplay.tv. The HTML page is the canonical one to cite, and the only place the tool actually runs. Free to quote and cite with attribution and a link to the source URL. 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