Reframing one edit into three aspect ratios

A finished 16:9 edit is not a deliverable, it's one deliverable. The same piece usually has to go out vertical for Reels and Shorts, square for a feed placement, and wide for YouTube or a site embed. The lazy version is exporting the wide cut and letting each platform crop it, which produces a vertical video with the subject in the middle third, a caption half off-screen, and a trimmed logo.

The version that works starts from a different premise: one master, rendered three times, with two things to get right — what leaves the frame, and what happens to the text.

The master is the timeline, not the file

Versely's editor renders from an EDL — an edit decision list. The timeline is a set of decisions (which clips, trimmed where, with what text, music, overlay and captions) and edit_video renders that decision set into a finished video. Aspect ratio is a parameter of the render, not a property of the timeline. That's the whole trick: the same timeline can be rendered at 9:16, 1:1 and 16:9 without being rebuilt, because the ratio was never baked into it.

So the master you protect is the project, not the export. save_editor_project snapshots a composition as a cloud draft that loads back with its full EDL intact. Saving a video edit as a reusable draft is the mechanic, and it's worth doing before the first export rather than after the third, because "I'll rebuild it" is a lie you tell yourself once per project.

One practical constraint while assembling: clips have to be HTTPS URLs from your workspace or a prior generation. Local file paths get rejected outright.

Text that's a timeline element vs text that's picture

This is the part briefs usually skip and the part that actually breaks deliveries.

There are two kinds of text in a finished video, and they behave completely differently under a reframe:

Timeline text is composed by the editor at render time — the texts and captions fields, laid out against whatever frame you asked for. Change the aspect ratio and the text is composed into the new frame. It doesn't get cropped, because it was never part of the picture.

Burned-in text is already pixels in a source clip. A hook clip that arrived with its line burned on. A caption pass applied to a standalone clip before it entered the timeline. A logo composited into a generation. This text is picture, so a reframe treats it exactly like a face or a product: crop the sides and it gets cut, letterbox the frame and it shrinks with everything else.

The operational rule falls straight out of that: if a video is going to three ratios, don't burn text into the source clips. Keep it as timeline text and let each render lay it out for its own frame. Burning in is fine when there's exactly one delivery. It stops being fine the moment there are three.

Element	Behaviour on reframe	Where to put it if you're going multi-ratio
Timeline text / captions	Re-composed for the new frame	Keep on the timeline
Text burned into a clip	Cropped or shrunk like any picture	Avoid, or accept it's ratio-specific
Music, voiceover	Unaffected	Anywhere
Overlay clip (PiP)	Repositioned against the new frame	Timeline, with position checked per ratio

Even with timeline text, position still needs a per-ratio look. Text that sits comfortably in the lower third of a 16:9 frame lands differently at 9:16, where it also competes with platform UI that isn't visible anywhere in your editor. The vertical ad safe zone map covers where each platform's chrome sits, which decides whether "lower third" is safe or covered.

What each ratio costs you in frame

Reframing crops or letterboxes. It cannot invent picture information that was never captured. What it can do is let you choose how the shortfall is absorbed, which is the decision to make deliberately per ratio.

9:16 vertical. Cropping in from a wide source cuts the left and right edges, and it takes more off them than any other common delivery — a 16:9 master cropped to 9:16 keeps under a third of its original width. If the action lives near the sides, say so up front — that determines whether the reframe crops tight on the subject or keeps the full frame with padded sides. Making a video vertical walks the specifics.

1:1 square. Square is the middle case, not the worst one: a 16:9 source cropped to 1:1 keeps a little over half its width, where the same source cropped to 9:16 keeps well under half. What makes it awkward is that square is neither of the shapes anything gets shot in, so it takes something off every source — sides from a wide master, top and bottom from a vertical one. Name what stays centred rather than assuming the centre of the frame and the subject are the same thing. Cropping a video to square covers it.

16:9 wide, from vertical. This is the hard direction. There's no picture information out on the sides to fill a wider frame with, so the choice is between padded or blurred sides that keep the whole original frame visible, and a tighter crop that fills the frame but loses top and bottom. Be explicit about which you want, because the two look completely different. Converting vertical video to horizontal covers the trade.

The general shape: wide-to-tall takes the biggest bite out of the sides, tall-to-wide loses top and bottom or gains padding, and square lands between the two while still taking something off whichever source it starts from. The format group collects the whole family of these jobs.

The process

1. Build the master at your dominant ratio. Assemble clips, trims, music, voiceover, timeline text and captions in one composition.
2. Keep text on the timeline. Anything you'll want re-laid-out per delivery must not be burned into a source clip.
3. Save the draft. Snapshot the project before rendering anything, so all three deliveries come from the same known state.
4. Preview each ratio at 480p. Render the timeline three times with preview: true and look at the framing in each. Previews are free and carry a short per-user cooldown, so you can check all three without spending credits — the cooldown just paces how fast you fire them off.
5. Fix per-ratio placement. Move text out of the region platform UI will occupy, adjust overlay position, decide the crop-or-pad question. Preview again.
6. Export three times. Each delivery is its own final render.

Step four is what changes the outcome. Most reframe disasters are invisible in the editor and obvious in a preview, because the editor shows you your composition and the preview shows you the frame.

What three deliveries actually bill

Be clear-eyed about this, because it's the one place the single-master idea doesn't save you anything.

Previews are free at 480p, subject to the per-user cooldown, so checking framing across all three ratios costs no credits. The final exports are three separate renders, each charging the normal single export price. What the single-master approach saves is rebuild time and consistency, not export charges.

What it does save within each delivery is real: the export price is charged once per finished file regardless of how many clips, texts or captions are in the timeline. A forty-clip assembly with music and a full caption track is the same single export charge as a two-clip trim. Previews and final exports has the breakdown of the two-mode billing shape.

When one master isn't the right answer

The single-master approach assumes the three deliveries are the same piece. Sometimes they shouldn't be.

If the vertical cut wants a different opening, a tighter runtime, or captions the wide cut doesn't need, you're not reframing any more, you're making a second edit. That's a legitimate call — a 40-second wide cut and a 15-second vertical cut of the same material are often both correct — but recognise it as a fork rather than forcing one timeline to serve two structures. Picking the right format for each platform is the decision layer above this one.

FAQ

Do I have to rebuild the timeline for each aspect ratio?

No. Aspect ratio is a parameter of the render, not a property of the timeline, so the same composition can be rendered at 9:16, 1:1 and 16:9. What you should do between renders is check the framing in a preview and adjust text and overlay placement, since a layout tuned for one frame rarely sits correctly in another without a look.

Will my captions get cut off in the vertical version?

Not if they're timeline captions, because those are composed into whichever frame you render. They will get cut if the text was already burned into a source clip before it entered the timeline, since at that point it's picture and crops like picture. That's the single strongest argument for keeping text as a timeline element on any project heading for more than one ratio.

Does exporting three ratios cost three times as much?

Three exports, three charges. Previews are the part that's free — 480p, with a short per-user cooldown — so you can check the framing on all three before committing to any of them. The per-export price doesn't scale with timeline complexity, so a long assembly costs the same per delivery as a short one.

What's the best ratio to build the master in?

Whichever one is your primary delivery, with one caveat: going tall-to-wide is harder than wide-to-tall, because there's no picture out on the sides to fill a wider frame with. If two deliveries matter roughly equally and one of them is 16:9, building the master wide gives the reframes more to work with. If vertical is clearly the main event, build vertical and accept that the wide version will need padding or a tight crop.