Choosing the right aspect ratio
Most tools treat aspect ratio as a crop: make the film, then trim the sides. PageToVid treats it as a decision about which device you are filming. That difference matters more than it sounds, and getting it wrong is the reason a vertical video sometimes looks like a desktop site squeezed into a phone.
The ratio chooses the device
This is the thing to know before anything else.
- 9:16 films your page's own mobile layout, in a real phone viewport.
- 16:9 and 1:1 film the desktop layout.
So a 9:16 film is not a cropped widescreen film. It is a different capture of a different rendering of your site — your mobile navigation, your stacked cards, your mobile pricing table. That is almost always what you want in a feed, because it is what the viewer would see if they tapped through.
It also means the page's best subjects differ between ratios. A comparison table that is the strongest thing on your desktop page may collapse into a stack on mobile. Run inspect_page in the ratio you will actually film, because the ranked subjects it returns are different.
16:9 — the default for anything watched on purpose
Use it for a landing-page hero, an embedded explainer, a YouTube upload, a sales email, a docs page.
The viewer in these placements chose to watch. They will give you thirty seconds, they usually have sound on, and the wide frame lets you show a full desktop interface without shrinking it to nothing.
It is the right ratio for anything where the product's real screen is the point, because a desktop app filmed at 9:16 has to be reframed so aggressively that you lose the context that made the screenshot persuasive.
9:16 — the feed
Reels, TikTok, Shorts, Stories. The viewer did not choose you; they are scrolling.
That changes how you build the film, not just its shape.
- The first second carries everything. Open on movement or a claim, never on a logo.
- Assume sound is off. Captions are not an accessibility extra here, they are the script.
- Keep the middle third clear. The caption band sits low and platform chrome sits high, so the thing you want seen belongs in the middle.
- Cut faster. A shot that holds for six seconds is a scroll.
When a desktop interface has to appear in a 9:16 film, it is drawn as a phone within the frame rather than shrunk to a sliver — so it stays readable above the caption band.
1:1 — the compromise that still has a job
Square survives in a feed better than landscape and takes less vertical space than 9:16. It suits an in-feed ad on a platform where you cannot be sure of the placement, and a post that will be seen on both a phone and a desktop.
It films the desktop layout, which is its quiet advantage: you keep the interface you actually want to show while getting a frame that does not look wasted on a phone. It is the pragmatic choice when one video has to go everywhere.
Making all three
Do not crop one film into three. The framing decisions differ — what is centred, how fast it cuts, how much text fits — and a cropped version of a widescreen film reads as a cropped version of a widescreen film.
Render the ratio you need. If you need several, a video pack renders multiple angles of the same page in one run, which is the intended path for a launch where the same page has to become a hero video, a vertical ad and a square post.
Whichever ratio you pick, the export is 1080p and the narration is identical in length across all three — the words set the running time, and the words do not change with the frame.
Turn your website into a video — free
Paste a URL. PageToVid scripts, records, voices and renders it automatically.
Create your first video →Frequently asked questions
Does 9:16 just crop the 16:9 video?
No. It is a separate capture of your page's mobile layout in a phone viewport, so you get your real mobile navigation and stacked layout rather than the middle slice of a desktop screenshot.
Which ratio should a SaaS demo use?
16:9, unless it is going in a feed. A desktop application needs the width, and the placements where a demo actually gets watched — your site, an email, YouTube, a sales call — are all landscape.
Can I change the ratio of an existing video?
Changing the ratio means re-capturing the page at a different viewport, so it is a new render rather than an edit. The storyboard can be reused, but the footage cannot.
What resolution is the export?
1080p on every ratio — 1920×1080 for 16:9, 1080×1920 for 9:16, 1080×1080 for 1:1. Captures are taken at retina density and downsampled, which is why text in a screen recording stays crisp.
My site has no mobile layout. What happens at 9:16?
You get the desktop layout rendered in a phone viewport, which usually means a lot of horizontal scrolling and small text. Run inspect_page at 9:16 first — if the ranked subjects come back thin, film at 16:9 or 1:1 instead.