Aspect Ratios, Guides, and Letterbox

Aspect ratio is the shape of your frame - widescreen 16:9, square 1:1, vertical 9:16, or cinematic 2.39:1. Getting it right for delivery, and knowing the difference between checking framing and baking it in, avoids nasty surprises in the final file.

Project aspect ratio versus export aspect ratio

There are two aspect ratios to think about:

• Project (sequence) aspect ratio - the shape you edit in.
• Export aspect ratio - the shape you deliver in.

Often they match. When they don't - delivering a vertical cut-down of a widescreen edit, say - you need to decide how the picture fills the new shape, using crop, letterbox, or the Reframe effect.

Guides for framing

Viewer guides help you compose for delivery without changing the picture:

• Safe areas (action safe and title safe) keep important content away from the edges.
• Aspect-ratio overlays show how a different delivery shape will crop your frame.
• A mask overlay previews exactly what falls outside the target frame.

Guides are covered in full in Viewers and playback. Remember: guides only show framing, they never change it.

Baking in a framing change

To actually change framing for delivery, you bake it into the picture with Reframe or the transform tools - repositioning, scaling, and blanking the image to the target shape (see Transform, crop, and reframing tools). This is what makes a vertical or square deliverable from a widescreen edit.

Letterbox and pillarbox

When the picture and the delivery frame are different shapes, you either crop the picture or pad the frame:

• Letterbox - black bars top and bottom (a wide image in a less-wide frame).
• Pillarbox - black bars left and right (a narrow image in a wider frame).

Reframe's blanking options handle this, letting you fit the whole image with bars, or fill the frame by zooming and cropping. Choose based on whether preserving the whole picture or filling the frame matters more.

Checking framing before delivery

Before you export a final deliverable:

• Turn on the target aspect overlay and confirm nothing important is cropped.
• Check titles and graphics sit inside title safe.
• If you've reframed, scrub the whole sequence to confirm the new framing works on every shot.
• After export, play the file back and confirm the framing is what you intended (see Web and social delivery).

Tip: Decide your delivery shapes before you finish editing. Framing a shot so it works in both 16:9 and 9:16 from the start is far easier than rescuing it at export.