Vertical video tools do four different jobs: finding clips inside a long recording, cropping footage to a new aspect ratio, assembling and polishing an edit, and generating the parts of the frame that were never filmed. Most tools handle one or two of them well. Knowing which job you actually have narrows the list fast.
Four jobs, four kinds of tool
Each job has a category of tool built around it. A clip-finder pulls the best moments out of a long recording. A reframing tool crops finished footage into a different aspect ratio. A manual editor builds and polishes a specific clip. Frame expansion generates the parts of the scene that fall outside the original shot, so a 16:9 clip becomes 9:16 without losing anything from frame.
The first three all work the same way underneath: they choose which pixels to keep. The fourth takes an AI video editor that can add pixels that were never there.
| Job | Tools | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Find clips | Klap, Opus Clip, quso.ai | Long recordings with more footage than you have time to review |
| Crop to a new ratio | CapCut Auto Reframe, Premiere Auto Reframe | A centered subject where the background is disposable |
| Assemble and polish | Runway Agent, CapCut, Premiere Pro, InShot, Filmora | A chosen clip that needs deliberate, hands-on work |
| Expand the frame | Runway Edit Studio (Aleph 2.0) | Footage in the wrong shape that can't afford to lose anything from frame |
| Add what wasn't shot | Runway | Transitions between mismatched cuts, or b-roll that has to match the footage around it |
Clip-finders: turning long footage into clips
Your starting point is a long recording, a podcast, a webinar or an interview, with more raw material than anyone wants to sift through by hand. A clip-finder watches the whole thing and surfaces the moments worth cutting out.
Klap and Opus Clip are built for this. Give either one a long recording and it finds the moments worth standing alone. quso.ai works the same way, scoring moments by how likely they are to hook a viewer, then reframing the best ones to 9:16 with captions already added.
These tools stop at selection. They don't polish footage, and someone who already knows which pull quote they're using gets nothing from them. Someone with 45 minutes of interview and no idea which three moments matter gets a lot.
Reframing tools: cropping footage to a new shape
Your starting point is footage shot horizontally that needs to become vertical without losing the subject out of frame.
CapCut Auto Reframe and Adobe Premiere Auto Reframe both track the subject through a horizontal clip and generate a vertical crop that follows it, rather than a static center crop that can cut a key element out of the shot. Worth knowing before you pick one: Auto Reframe sits in CapCut's paid subscription rather than the free version.
Both work well within one constraint. A crop is a choice about what to discard. Going from 16:9 to 9:16 throws away roughly 60% of the horizontal frame, so a two-person interview, a product shot with the logo at the edge or a wide establishing shot loses whatever doesn't fit the window. Neither tool finds the good moments in a longer video, and neither handles captions, music or pacing.
Manual editors: full control over the cut
Manual editors are the broadest category. Your starting point is a collection of footage ready to become a finished video with real creative decisions in between. CapCut, Adobe Premiere Pro, InShot and Filmora all do this, differing mainly in how much control and complexity they hand you.
CapCut is built for speed and phone-first editing: drop in footage, cut dead space, auto-generate captions, add text and music, produce a few variations. It's the practical default for most short-form work. Premiere Pro trades some of that speed for stronger color and audio tools and workflows built for repeatable client deliverables. InShot and Filmora land closer to CapCut, mobile-first and built around quick edits rather than professional control.
None of them changes what's inside a clip. They cut, arrange and grade footage that already exists, which is the right job most of the time. Choosing between them comes down to how much time you have, how much you already know and how much polish the project needs.
Frame expansion: generating what you never filmed
The fourth job only became possible recently, and it inverts the reframing problem. Instead of choosing which part of a 16:9 frame survives the crop to 9:16, you keep the whole frame and generate the scene above and below it.
Runway does this in Edit Studio with Aleph 2.0. Upload footage, pick a target aspect ratio, describe what should appear in the new areas of the frame, and the model generates the rest of the scene with lighting, motion and texture matched to the source. Nothing gets cropped out, because nothing has to be.
The specifics that matter when you're comparing:
- Clips up to 30 seconds at 1080p, with the edit holding across cuts in a multi-shot sequence. You don't work shot by shot.
- It runs on real footage, not just AI-generated clips. Campaign assets, product shoots and raw camera files all work.
- Target ratios are 16:9, 9:16, 1:1, 4:3, 3:4 and 21:9, plus an Auto option. That covers 9:16 for TikTok, Reels and Shorts, 1:1 for feed posts, 16:9 for YouTube and 21:9 for anamorphic widescreen.
- Available on all paid Runway plans.
How to Expand Videos on Runway Academy walks through a full pass, and the Edit Studio expansion guide covers the settings.
Cropping vs. expanding
| Reframing tools | Frame expansion | |
|---|---|---|
| What happens to the frame | Pixels are discarded | Pixels are added |
| 16:9 to 9:16 | Roughly 60% of the width is cut | Full width kept, scene built above and below |
| Two subjects side by side | One gets cropped out or the crop pans between them | Both stay in frame |
| Product or logo near the edge | At risk | Preserved |
| Best when | The subject is centered and the background is disposable | The composition matters, or the shot can't be reshot |
| Tools | CapCut Auto Reframe, Premiere Auto Reframe | Aleph 2.0 in Runway |
Miro's brand team hit this tradeoff building the Canvas26 keynote video, which played across four cities and needed wide views for projection screens. Production Lead Antoine Levi found that even working in 4K, "cropping to our format would have lost resolution," so the team generated natively at the dimensions they needed rather than cutting down to them.
Doing both jobs without switching tools
Cropping and expanding aren't rivals. Most social work needs both, plus a cut, and the useful question is how many tools that takes.
Runway splits this across two surfaces. The Timeline in Agent is where you assemble a cut: arrange clips on tracks, trim and split them, layer video and audio, then render out. You can do it by hand or ask Agent in chat, and right-clicking a clip and choosing Detect Shots splits it automatically at every scene change. Edit Studio is the frame-accurate editor for work inside a single clip: masking out an object, painting a change into one region of the frame, expanding the frame to a new aspect ratio. The rule of thumb is arranging clips goes to the Timeline, changing what happens inside one clip goes to Edit Studio.
Runway also generates video, which matters inside an edit more than it sounds. A cut that jumps awkwardly between two shots can take a generated bridge between them. A sequence short on coverage can take b-roll generated to match its own lighting and look rather than pulled from a stock library and color-matched after. Footage that needs nothing added will cut fine in any editor on this list. Runway earns its place when the edit needs something nobody shot.
Most of this runs in a browser, but a lot of social video gets made on a phone. Runway's iPhone and Android app runs the same workflow: pick a clip from your camera roll, prompt Agent, and expand it to a new aspect ratio without moving to a desktop. A vertical cut can start and finish on the device that shot the footage.
The 30-second edit window does mean an hour-long podcast triage still belongs to a dedicated clip-finder. And Premiere has capabilities to help you go deep on color and audio for a complex deliverable. Luckily, that's not a choice you have to make: Runway's free plugin puts a panel inside Premiere Pro and After Effects, so you can re-render a timeline clip with Aleph 2.0 or generate a shot at the playhead without exporting, uploading and reimporting. Grade and mix where you already do, and reach for the model when the footage needs something it doesn't have.
The mechanics of turning one master edit into versions for every platform, including captions and structure, are covered in the guide to editing videos for social media.
Frequently asked questions
How do I turn a horizontal video into a vertical one without cropping?
Upload the clip to Runway's Edit Studio, choose 9:16 as the target ratio and describe what should appear in the new areas of the frame. Aleph 2.0 generates the scene above and below the original footage, matched to its lighting and motion, so the full width of the original shot stays visible. Crop-based tools like CapCut Auto Reframe and Premiere Auto Reframe can't do this, because they select a window inside the existing frame rather than adding to it.
How do I cut a long video into short clips?
Two approaches. A clip-finder like Opus Clip or Klap watches a long recording and picks the moments worth using, which suits an hour of unstructured footage. If you already know roughly what you want, open a Timeline in Runway Agent, right-click the clip and choose Detect Shots to split it automatically at every scene change, then trim the pieces by dragging their edges or by asking Agent in chat. Export each clip at the ratio the platform needs.
How do I extend a video clip that is too short?
It depends which dimension is short. If the clip doesn't run long enough, generate additional footage and assemble it on a timeline. If the clip is the wrong shape, that's frame expansion rather than duration: Edit Studio expands the frame outward to a new aspect ratio with Aleph 2.0, on clips between two and 30 seconds.
Is CapCut's Auto Reframe free?
No. Auto Reframe is part of CapCut's paid subscription rather than the free version. Which paid tier includes it has changed, so check CapCut's current Standard vs Pro comparison before subscribing. The rest of CapCut's manual editing tools remain free.
What's the best vertical video editor for most people?
CapCut covers most manual editing quickly and cheaply, and it's the right default for straightforward short-form work. A clip-finder like Opus Clip or Klap is better when the raw material is a long recording rather than a chosen clip. Runway is the better answer when footage is in the wrong aspect ratio and cropping would cost you something in frame.
Does Runway work for TikTok and Reels?
Yes. Generate or upload footage and assemble the cut on a Timeline in Agent, then open the clip in Edit Studio and set the output to 9:16. If the source was shot horizontally, Aleph 2.0 expands the frame to vertical rather than cropping it, so a 16:9 shot becomes a full-bleed Reel without losing the edges of the composition. This runs in the Runway phone app as well as the browser, so footage shot on a phone can be edited, expanded and exported without touching a computer.
Most vertical video problems come down to a shot that was framed for the wrong screen. Expand a clip to any aspect ratio in Runway's Edit Studio and the full composition survives the move to 9:16 instead of getting cropped out of it. Get started for free.
Related: How to edit videos for social media · Runway Agent
