Vertical video has become the go-to format for social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. With users consuming content on mobile devices, vertical video maximizes screen space and increases engagement. However, converting horizontal videos into vertical formats can be tricky, especially when keeping the most essential parts of the video in the frame.
This is where Cloudinary’s smart video cropping comes in. Using AI, Cloudinary automatically detects the key elements in your video and adjusts the crop to ensure that essential content stays visible, even when transitioning to vertical aspect ratios like 9:16. In this post, we’ll explore how you can use Cloudinary’s smart cropping to easily convert horizontal videos into vertical formats that are perfect for social media.
When adapting horizontal videos for vertical formats, traditional cropping methods often result in key parts of the video being cut off. This is where Cloudinary’s smart video cropping shines. By leveraging AI, it analyzes the video to detect essential objects, such as people or faces, and automatically adjusts the crop to focus on these elements.
For instance, let’s say you have a horizontal video with a subject in the center. When converting it to a 9:16 aspect ratio for platforms like TikTok or Instagram Stories, Cloudinary’s smart cropping ensures that the subject remains the focus, regardless of how much of the original video needs to be removed to fit the vertical format.
Here’s how this would look when converting a horizontal video to a vertical format:
- Cloudinary will analyze the original horizontal video (e.g., 16:9).
- Key elements such as people, animals, or prominent objects are detected.
- Cloudinary applies smart cropping to ensure the critical content is in focus, making the transition to 9:16 seamless.
This not only saves time but also ensures that the video is optimized for different devices and platforms, keeping your content front and center.
Let’s examine a real example to see how Cloudinary’s smart video cropping can transform a horizontal video into a vertical format for social media while maintaining focus on the most important content.
For this example, I use one of the sample videos available when I sign in with my account. Here’s the original video in its horizontal format (16:9):
https://res.cloudinary.com/<my_cloud_name>/video/upload/v1726513988/samples/cld-sample-video.mp4
This is a standard horizontal video. Let’s convert it to a vertical format like 9:16.
We can apply a simple transformation that resizes and crops the video to a 360×640 resolution to make the video fit vertically without distortion:
https://res.cloudinary.com/<my_cloud_name>/video/upload/w_360,h_640,c_fill/v1726513988/samples/cld-sample-video.mp4
While the video has been successfully resized for vertical viewing, you might notice that the person occasionally moves out of focus. This happens because the cropping is static and doesn’t account for the subject’s movement within the frame.
Now, let’s apply Cloudinary’s smart cropping using the g_auto (gravity auto) parameter. This ensures that the person stays in focus throughout the video by dynamically adjusting the crop based on content:
https://res.cloudinary.com/<my_cloud_name>/video/upload/w_360,h_640,c_fill,g_auto/v1726513988/samples/cld-sample-video.mp4
As you can see, the person remains in the video’s focus, making the final result much smoother and more natural. Cloudinary’s smart cropping intelligently detects the subject and shifts the frame to keep them in view, even in a vertical format.
Here’s a side-by-side comparison of the original versus simple crop versus smart cropping:
This example highlights how Cloudinary’s smart video cropping can significantly improve the viewing experience on social media by ensuring that important content remains in focus.
While Cloudinary’s smart video cropping does a fantastic job of automatically converting horizontal videos to vertical formats, keep in mind that different social media platforms often have their own preferred aspect ratios or specific cropping needs. Fortunately, Cloudinary gives you plenty of flexibility with its transformation options, so you can easily tweak the settings to fit your exact requirements.
If you want to explore more about how Cloudinary’s AI works for video cropping, check out our documentation on video transformations is a great place to start. It’s full of helpful tips and advanced techniques to get the most out of Cloudinary’s powerful cropping tools. Then, sign up for free today.
