Screen recording to vertical video for Shorts, Reels and TikTok

To turn a screen recording into a vertical video, reframe it to 9:16 and let zooms do the work: a tall frame that follows the part of the screen that matters, large captions for people watching with the sound off, and a background that fills whatever space is left. Posting the wide recording as it is, or cropping a slice out of the middle, rarely works. Focal, a screen recorder for Windows, does the reframing from one recording: you pick the 9:16 aspect ratio after you record, and the zooms and captions re-aim for it.

My name is Vince. I make Focal, and I have spent more evenings than I would like to admit holding a phone at arm’s length, squinting at a menu that looked perfectly fine on my monitor. Here is what those evenings taught me.

Why a wide recording fails on a phone

A screen is wide and a phone held upright is tall, and neither of them is going to budge. Fit a 16:9 recording into a 9:16 frame and it becomes a strip across the middle, under a third of the frame’s height, with empty space above and below. Your viewer is now looking at your app through a mail slot, and the text that was comfortable on your monitor is too small to read.

The other fix, cropping a tall slice out of the middle, keeps the height but throws away more than two thirds of the width. The menu you click is on the left, the result appears on the right, and the crop shows neither.

What works is a frame that moves: a tall window onto the recording that goes where the action is, close enough that the text reads on a phone, and pulls back only when you need the context.

Plan the recording for a tall frame

Most of the work happens before you press record, and none of it is hard.

• Record a narrower window. A browser or app at about half the width of your screen fits a tall frame far better than a maximized one, and it still looks good in a wide export with a background around it.
• Make the interface bigger. Zoom the browser in with Ctrl and plus, or raise the app’s font size, before you record. Text that feels oversized on a monitor looks normal on a phone. If it feels a little silly while you record, it is probably the right size.
• One thing at a time. Do one action, let it land, then do the next. Two things happening at opposite sides of the screen cannot both fit in a tall frame.
• Fewer things on screen. Close the sidebars, panels and tabs you are not using, hide the bookmarks bar, and clear the desktop.
• Keep cause and effect close. If the button you click and the result it causes sit near each other, one zoom shows both.
• Keep it to one idea. A Short is one task, not a tour of the product. Record the task and stop.

If the Short is cut from a longer product demo, the planning in how to record a product demo video on Windows applies too.

Zooms are the whole trick

A vertical screen video is zoomed in most of the time. The zoom turns a strip of tiny text into a frame you can read, and the pans between zooms let a tall frame show a wide screen one part at a time.

Hold each zoom longer than you would in a wide video. On a phone the viewer sees less of the screen around the zoomed area and needs a moment to find their place. Fewer, slower, longer zooms read better on a small screen than many quick ones. A Short full of quick zooms does not feel energetic on a phone. It feels like a tour guide with a train to catch. I go deeper on making zooms look filmed rather than cut in how to add zoom effects to a screen recording.

Captions for people watching with the sound off

A lot of people scroll with the sound off: on a bus, in an open office, in bed next to someone who is trying to sleep. If your Short has narration, the captions carry it.

• Large. Bigger than feels right on your monitor, because a phone shows them at a fraction of the size.
• A few words at a time. A long line in a narrow frame wraps into a paragraph nobody reads. Two or three words at once, changing as you speak, keep up with the eye.
• Mark the word being spoken. Coloring or boxing the current word lets a muted viewer follow your pace.
• Clear of the app’s buttons. Shorts, Reels and TikTok draw their own buttons down the right side and the account name and description across the bottom. The middle of the frame stays clear.

How to make captions on your own computer, and how to correct them, is in how to add captions to a screen recording.

Backgrounds and the camera

When a zoom eases out, the recording is smaller than the tall frame and something has to fill the space. Black bars look like a mistake, even when they were a decision. A soft gradient, or the recording itself blurred behind it, looks intended. Keep the background quiet so it never competes with the text.

If you are on camera, your bubble is a small shape on a small screen, so give it a clear spot. Put it near the top, a little in from the edge, where neither the app’s buttons nor your captions will land on your face. A circle or a tall rectangle sits better in a narrow frame than a wide one.

How to do it in Focal

Focal records the screen without the cursor in it and logs the cursor, clicks and keys as data, so the frame can change after recording and the zooms still know where every click was.

1. Record as usual. Press Print Screen, then click a window to snap to it or drag a region. In Chrome, Edge and other Chromium browsers, a window recording can leave out everything but the page.
2. Pick 9:16 in the editor. It is the second aspect ratio in the title bar, or press 2. The automatic zooms made from your clicks and typing, and the captions, re-aim for the tall frame. 1:1 and 4:5 are there too, for posts in a feed.
3. Check the zooms. Give the important ones a longer hold time, or set the zoom speed to Slow for every zoom or just one. Press Z to add a zoom where one is missing, click the video to set its focus, or let a zoom follow the cursor.
4. Make captions with the Shorts look. They are made on your computer by a speech model that runs there. The Shorts look is one of six caption looks, and you can set captions to show a few words at a time, color or box the word being spoken, and sit in the middle of the frame.
5. Fill the frame. Pick one of the twelve ready-made backgrounds, a gradient of up to five colors, an image, or the recording itself blurred behind it. Turn the cursor up to a larger size so it reads on a phone. Save the whole look as a style and your next Short starts from it.
6. Place the camera bubble. Drag it in the preview to the top of the frame, away from the right edge, and size it so it does not crowd the text.
7. Export with the Shorts and Reels preset, at 1080p under Size. The preview is drawn by the same renderer as the export, so what you checked is what you get. For a 4:5 feed post, use the Instagram post preset; for 1:1, pick 1:1 and export with your own settings.
8. Export the wide version from the same recording. Use Save a copy, set the aspect ratio back to 16:9 in the copy and export with the YouTube preset. You keep both edits and record nothing twice.

Focal writes an MP4 to a folder on your computer and does not post anywhere for you, so you upload the file to each app yourself. The hashtags, I am afraid, are still yours to write. Focal is free to record and edit with every feature and no time limit, and exporting needs a license. Download the trial and see your next Short in the preview before you decide.

Doing it by hand in an editor

Any video editor with keyframes can do this, and if you already have one it costs nothing, which is a price I cannot beat. Make a 9:16 project, put the wide recording on the timeline, scale it up until the text is readable, and add position keyframes so the frame moves to each click. Put a blurred copy of the recording on the track below to fill the empty space. Then add captions and keep them off the bottom of the frame.

It works. It is also slow. Every move is a pair of keyframes and an easing curve you set by hand, the cursor gets soft as you scale it up because it is part of the pixels, and the wide version means placing every keyframe again. For one Short a month, an editor you already know is fine. For one every week, that hand work is what I built Focal to remove.