I have full HD videos in 1920x1080 resolution. But to display them on mobile I have been asked by my client to convert them to vertical video aspect ratio? Is it possible to convert a horizontal aspect ratio video to a vertical aspect ratio video, now that I can’t re-record the video?
Yes, you can convert a horizontal video to a vertical aspect ratio using ImageKit’s Video API’s resizing parameters
What is a vertical video aspect ratio?
Vertical aspect ratios are like 9:16 (e.g., 1080x1920), ideal for mobile-first platforms like Instagram Reels, TikTok, or YouTube Shorts.
How to convert it a horizontal aspect ratio video to vertical?
Let’s start with a horizontal video like below
https://ik.imagekit.io/ikmedia/example_video.mp4
We can resize it to a vertical aspect ratio by adding parameters width and height parameter of ImageKit’s Video API (900 x 1600)
https://ik.imagekit.io/ikmedia/example_video.mp4?tr=w-900,h-1600
This crops the central part of your horizontal video and resizes it to a mobile-friendly vertical format.
Instead of specifying both height and width, we can specify one along with the desired aspect ratio using the ar parameter
https://ik.imagekit.io/ikmedia/example_video.mp4?tr=w-900,ar-9-16
Optional: Add padding around the video instead of cropping
In the above examples to match the vertical aspect ratio, the horizontal video was cropped on the sides. If you don’t want to crop, you can instead pad the original video with color of your choice. This will give you the desired output dimensions along with the entire uncropped video at the center and the solid color on the sides.
https://ik.imagekit.io/ikmedia/example_video.mp4?tr=w-900,ar-9-16,cm-pad_resize,bg-DDDDDD
You don’t need to re-record the video. Use ImageKit transformations to crop and resize your horizontal videos into vertical 9:16 aspect ratio.