Should listing videos be vertical or horizontal?
Short answer
Vertical (9:16) for Instagram Reels, TikTok, Stories, and most paid social. Horizontal (16:9) for MLS, portals, your website, and YouTube. Shoot horizontally in 4K and crop a vertical cut out of it — that gives you both deliverables from one shoot without filming twice.
This is a distribution question, not a taste question. Posting a horizontal video to Reels does not just look worse — the platform shows it in a small letterboxed box in the middle of a vertical screen, which measurably reduces watch time, and watch time is what determines reach.
Where each format belongs
| Platform | Format | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| Instagram Reels | Vertical 9:16 | 1080 × 1920 |
| TikTok | Vertical 9:16 | 1080 × 1920 |
| Stories | Vertical 9:16 | 1080 × 1920 |
| Facebook feed | Vertical or square | 1080 × 1350 or 1080 × 1080 |
| MLS / portals | Horizontal 16:9 | 1920 × 1080 |
| Your website | Horizontal 16:9 | 1920 × 1080 |
| YouTube | Horizontal 16:9 | 1920 × 1080 or 4K |
Shoot horizontal in 4K, deliver both
A 4K horizontal frame is 3840 pixels wide. A vertical 1080 × 1920 crop taken from the middle of it is still full resolution, so you can produce the vertical cut afterwards without a second shoot. Filming vertically first does not work in reverse — cropping a horizontal frame out of vertical footage loses most of the image.
Compose for the crop
If you know a vertical cut is coming, keep the subject centred and avoid putting anything important at the far edges of the frame. Rooms shot from a corner survive a centre crop well; long horizontal pans of a kitchen counter do not.
What vertical does badly
Wide rooms. A vertical frame shows a lot of ceiling and floor and very little of the width, which is the opposite of what a listing wants to prove. That is why vertical cuts work best as a highlight reel of moments — a reveal, a detail, a view — rather than as a complete tour.
The one-shoot workflow
- Film horizontal, 4K, 30fps, subject centred
- Cut the full 60–90s horizontal tour for the portal and website
- Crop the best 25 seconds to 9:16 for Reels and TikTok
- Pull one 8-second moment vertical for stories and ads
- Add captions to the vertical cuts — feed video is watched muted
Common questions
Can I post a horizontal video to Instagram Reels?
You can, and it will be letterboxed into a small band in the middle of the screen. It reduces watch time, and reduced watch time reduces reach. A ten-minute crop is worth doing every time.
Is square video still useful?
Square (1:1) is a reasonable compromise for the Facebook and Instagram feed, where it takes more vertical space than 16:9 without needing a separate vertical export. It is not competitive on Reels or TikTok, where full 9:16 is the standard.
Should the portal video be the same cut as the social video?
No. The portal video shows how the home connects and runs 60 to 90 seconds. The social cut is a highlight reel of 20 to 40 seconds designed to stop a scroll. Same footage, different jobs.
PropWalk outputs your walkthrough in the shape you need — horizontal for the portal, vertical for the feed — from the listing photos you already have.
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