21 October 2026

Reels, TikTok and Shorts are watched vertically, at 9:16. Upload a landscape video as it is and you get black bars above and below. Here are three ways to turn a video vertical, starting with the fastest: just ask Wedi.

Option 1: Tell Wedi “Prepare for Reels”

Put your video on the timeline.
In the Wedi island at the top, type Prepare for Reels in the box (or press the microphone button and say it).
Wedi makes the video vertical 9:16 and shows you the preview. It asks whether to Keep it and whether to add captions too.
Keep it and the vertical version stays. If you don’t like it, Wedi puts everything back as it was. Every command can be undone.

If the canvas is already vertical, Wedi tells you instead of doing needless work.

Option 2: Keep the speaker in frame with Camera follow

When you crop landscape footage to vertical, you want the frame to follow the person talking, or they may drift out of shot.

Select the clip and open Camera follow from Smart tools.
Pick the preset Center the speaker (9:16). There’s also Follow the object and Steady camera (no shake).
If the project canvas is landscape, Weditra asks whether to switch the canvas to 9:16. Switch canvas to 9:16 moves your other clips onto the new canvas too; Apply on current canvas leaves it as is. Both come back with a single undo.
The frame is found with face and person detection on your computer. If no face is found the tool tells you, and you can adjust smoothing and camera speed by hand.

Option 3: Start vertical

When you create a new project, choose Reels · TikTok as the format and the canvas is 9:16 from the start. This is the right choice when you’re working with videos shot vertically on a phone.

Don’t forget captions

Many people watch with the sound off. In the Captions panel, choose a language under Auto captions and press Create captions from speech; you get word-highlighted captions. To move them, tell Wedi “put the captions at the top”. Steps are in the captions guide.

If you’re pulling short pieces out of a long talk, Suggest short clips in Smart tools finds sections that make sense on their own, based on the captions. You can open the result as a vertical 9:16 copy in a new project.

Export

Press Export at the top right.
In the Where to list, choose Reels · TikTok. This gives MP4/H.264 at 1080p, up to 60 fps.
Start. What you saw in the preview is what the exported file looks like.

There’s no watermark. Prevent clipping is on by default in new projects, so loud peaks don’t distort.

Tips

Keep important text and faces away from the top and bottom edges; the apps place their own buttons there.
Make the first second count; viewers decide fast.
After going vertical, check the framing. Automatic framing can be wrong, and you can correct it by hand at any point.

FAQ

Is my video uploaded anywhere? No. Face and person detection, captions and export all run on your computer.

What if the frame follows the wrong person? In Camera follow you can change the source or use the custom settings to adjust the framing.

Do I need a separate export for each platform? The Reels · TikTok preset makes a vertical MP4 that suits all three.

Weditra is free with no watermark. For the Windows version, see the Download page.

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