How to resize a video for Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and more

The free video resizer resizes a video in your browser. The new file is made on your device, so nothing is uploaded, and there's no sign-up and no watermark.

1. Open your video, or try the example first. It resizes up to 30 minutes at a time; from a longer video, pick the part you want.
2. Pick a size: 9:16 for TikTok, Reels and Shorts (1080 × 1920), 4:5 for Instagram and Facebook feed posts (1080 × 1350), 1:1 square (1080 × 1080) or 16:9 for YouTube, X and LinkedIn (1920 × 1080). Or keep the same shape at another resolution (2160p, 1440p, 1080p, 720p, 480p or 360p, measured on the shorter side), or type any width and height from 128 to 3840 pixels.
3. Choose how the picture fills the new shape: crop to fill, blurred background or bars. With crop to fill, drag the picture to choose what's kept. Which one suits your video is further down.
4. Check the preview. It draws exactly what the file will be.
5. Download the MP4: H.264 video at the new size, with the video's sound.

Every frame is re-encoded at the new size, which is what lets it change the shape as well as the pixels. Before you post, drop the result into the video size checker to see it against TikTok's, Instagram's and YouTube's rules at once.

People say “resize” for four different jobs. Knowing which one you need saves you from a video that's the right size and the wrong shape, or the right shape and still too big to send.

A crop and a resize often go together. Crop a 1920 × 1080 video to 9:16 at its own pixels and you get a 608 × 1080 slice; the apps want 1080 × 1920, so it's then scaled up to fill. The resizer does both in one go, and the crop video tool does only the first, which is what you want when you'll scale later in an editor.

Compressing is the one people mix up most. A minute of 1080 × 1920 video is about 23 MB at 3 Mbps and about 225 MB at 30 Mbps: the difference is how many bits it spends each second, not its size in pixels. If a file is too big for an email or a chat app, compress it rather than resize it; how to compress a video explains what fits where.

Every app takes a range of shapes, but each has one that fills its screen or its feed best. These are the four the free resizer makes, at 1080 pixels on the short side:

Why 1080 pixels on the short side? It clears every app's minimum (720 pixels on Instagram, 720 × 1280 on TikTok's web upload) with room to spare, and it's standard HD: YouTube's 1080p is 1920 × 1080. YouTube lists 16:9 sizes from 426 × 240 (240p) to 7680 × 4320 (8K); 1920 × 1080 is its 1080p and 3840 × 2160 its 4K. More on each app, including where captions are safe from its buttons, is in video sizes for TikTok, Reels and Shorts.

Need a size that isn't here? Type one in the resizer, and work out the other side at your shape with the aspect ratio calculator: a 4:5 video 720 wide, say, is 720 × 900.

Change the shape of a video and the old picture no longer fits the new frame. There are three ways to deal with it, and they look very different:

• Crop to fill. The picture fills the frame and loses its edges (the sides, going from wide to tall). Use it when one thing in the middle carries the shot: one person talking, a product, the action. Drag the picture to keep the part that matters.
• Blurred background. The whole picture, sharp, on a blurred and enlarged copy of itself, so the frame looks full and nothing is cut. Use it when the edges matter: a group, a slide, a screen recording, a landscape.
• Bars. The whole picture on a plain color. The plainest look, and the space can hold a title: put one in the top bar with the add text to video tool. Mind the apps, though: Instagram says it shows reels with borders less often, and YouTube asks you not to add padding or black bars to a video, since its player fits each video's shape itself.

Here's what each costs, for a 1920 × 1080 video put into each of the other shapes:

The two shares match, and that's the whole trade: a crop keeps 32% of a wide picture big, and a fit keeps all of it at 32% of the screen. For a person talking, the crop wins: their face is about 3 times as wide. For two people sitting apart or a slide full of text, the fit wins, because a crop cuts out the point. To make a horizontal video vertical step by step, see how to convert a horizontal video to vertical, or use the vertical video converter.

iPhone: the Photos app. It crops a video to a preset shape:

1. Open the video in Photos and tap the Edit button.
2. Tap the Crop button, then the Aspect Ratio button.
3. Choose a preset, such as Square or 9:16. When you drag a corner instead, the crop keeps the video's shape: tap the lock at the top right to unlock it.
4. Drag the corners, or pinch, to frame the part you want to keep, then tap Done.

To undo it later, open the video, tap the Edit button, then Revert.

Android: Google Photos. Its video editor crops too:

1. Open the video in the Google Photos app.
2. Tap Crop, then Aspect ratio, and choose one, like square.
3. At the top, tap Save to save a copy with your edits.

Google notes that crop needs Android 6.0 or later and at least 1 GB of RAM, and that Android 9 phones other than Pixels can't edit video at all.

Both only crop. Neither puts the whole picture on a blurred background or between bars, and their help pages give no way to set the size in pixels. For an exact size or a fill, use the free resizer.

Windows: Clipchamp. For video, Microsoft's help page for the Photos app in Windows lists one edit: trim. For more, it points you to Clipchamp: open the video in Photos and select Edit in Clipchamp video editor. Clipchamp has a free plan; you sign in with a Microsoft account and use it in its Windows app or in Edge or Chrome.

1. Import your video and drag it onto the timeline.
2. Click the size button on the floating toolbar above the stage and pick a shape: 9:16, 16:9, 1:1, 4:3, 4:5, 2:3 or 21:9. Hover over each to preview it.
3. A video of another shape gets black bars. To crop it to fill instead, select it on the timeline and click the fill button on the floating toolbar, then drag it on the stage to reposition it. Microsoft notes it's done one clip at a time.
4. Click Export and choose 480p, 720p, 1080p or 4K. 1080p is the largest the free plan saves, with no watermark.

Mac: Photos to change the shape, QuickTime Player to change the resolution. In Photos, double-click the video, click Edit, then Crop, and choose an aspect ratio in the sidebar (Square, 16:9, 4:5 and others, or Custom); drag the selection rectangle over the part to keep and click Done. In QuickTime Player, choose File > Export As, then 4K, 1080p, 720p or 480p. Apple notes that sizes larger than the video are dimmed, so it only scales down; the shape stays the same, and it saves a .mov file, not an MP4.

iMovie won't change the shape: Apple's iMovie for Mac guide says its crop frame is constrained to 16:9.

• Don't enlarge it much. Scaling up adds pixels, not detail. A 9:16 crop of a 1080p video is enlarged 1.8× to fill 1080 × 1920, which looks fine; of a 720p video, 2.7×, which looks soft, most of all on faces and text. Past about 2×, start from a bigger video. From 4K, the crop is 0.9×: shrunk, not enlarged, and sharp.
• Start from the original. Resize the file from your camera, phone or editor, not one downloaded back from an app: a download is a compressed copy, which has already lost detail once, and resizing compresses it again.
• Give it enough bitrate. Resizing re-encodes every frame, and more pixels need more bits. YouTube's recommended upload bitrates for SDR video at 24 to 30 fps are 8 Mbps at 1080p, 5 at 720p and 35 to 45 at 4K (12, 7.5 and 53 to 68 at 48 to 60 fps). Upload the best copy you have, and compress only to fit a limit, with the video compressor.
• Keep the frame rate. YouTube asks you to upload at the frame rate you recorded at, and Instagram asks for at least 30 fps. Resizing should change the frame, not the timing.

Most videos people resize for TikTok, Reels and Shorts are 16:9 recordings of people talking: podcasts, interviews, streams, talks. A fixed 9:16 crop is a window a third of the frame wide, and people don't stay in it. The speaker leans or walks out of it; in a conversation, two people take turns, and the crop stays on whoever was talking when you set it. A blurred background keeps everyone, but small. By hand, the fix is keyframing the crop in an editor, shot by shot, and that's slow.

Clyper's auto reframe does that part for clips. Paste a YouTube link (public or unlisted, 1 minute to 4 hours) or upload the video, and Clyper:

• reads the transcript to find the best moments, and cuts each one on whole sentences;
• frames each clip 9:16 on whoever's talking, and switches when someone else speaks;
• stacks a stream's webcam over the game;
• captions every word, and saves each clip as a 1080 × 1920 MP4 with no watermark.

It makes clips, not one resized copy of the whole video: for that, use the resizer above. How it goes from a long video to Shorts is in YouTube to Shorts.