How to format to youtube shorts spec without premiere
- Step 1Drop your landscape or square video — Drop your source clip
- Step 2Preview the portrait crop — JAD reframes to 9:16, trims to 60s, and encodes for Shorts
- Step 3Export in Shorts format — Upload directly to YouTube
Frequently asked questions
What are the exact YouTube Shorts video requirements?+
YouTube Shorts must be 9:16 vertical aspect ratio (1080×1920 recommended), between 15 seconds and 60 seconds long, H.264 codec in MP4 or MOV container, and under 256 MB file size. Shorts also require a frame rate of 24, 25, 30, 48, 50, or 60 fps. JAD outputs H.264 MP4 at the original frame rate to meet all these requirements.
Can I format a horizontal clip as a Short without cropping?+
You can use letterbox/pillarbox mode to keep the full horizontal frame and add black bars on the sides within the 9:16 canvas. This avoids cropping but results in a smaller effective image. Alternatively, blur-fill mode stretches and blurs the horizontal image to fill the background behind a centred crop — a popular format used by many Shorts creators.
Does YouTube re-compress Shorts after upload?+
Yes — YouTube re-encodes all uploaded video for its internal streaming pipeline. The final quality depends on YouTube's encoder settings, not your upload bitrate above a threshold. Uploading a higher-quality encode (e.g. CRF 18–22 H.264) provides better source material for YouTube's encoder and produces a better-looking final Short.
Privacy first
All video processing runs locally in your browser using WebAssembly and FFmpeg. No file is ever uploaded — only metadata counters are saved for signed-in dashboard stats.