Meta video ratios 9:16 to 16:9: fit blur or cover in Sume Timeline

Short answer

Meta's requirements chart lists a ratio range for each placement: Facebook Feed accepts 16:9 to 9:16, Facebook and Messenger Stories 1.91:1 to 9:16, Instagram Feed and Explore 1.91:1 to 4:5, and Audience Network in-stream 4:3 to 16:9. If your source is 16:9 and the delivery is 9:16, something has to give: crop, letterbox or blur. In Sume Timeline 1.0 that is the per-slot fit setting: cover (the default), contain, stretch or blur.

Cover fills the frame and crops the sides. Contain keeps the whole picture with bars. Blur keeps the whole picture and fills the bars with a blurred version of the clip. Stretch distorts and is almost never right.

What each fit does

The Timeline doc lists the four values; the right choice depends on what is in the frame.

Choosing for ads

For product shots with the product centered, cover is clean. For screen recordings, dashboards or slides, cover can cut off the edges where the controls live, so contain or blur is safer. For footage with text across the whole width, blur or contain keeps every word.

Blur also solves a common problem when mixing sources. A timeline with one 16:9 clip among 9:16 clips looks jarring with black bars; a blur fill keeps the rhythm. Check the result at phone size rather than on a desktop monitor, because the blur band reads differently at small sizes.

• Set the output frame explicitly: default is 1080x1920; width and height are even integers from 256 to 2160.
• Set fit per video slot, so mixed ratios can use different values.
• Keep captions and calls to action out of the bar area, whether blurred or not.

Square and 4:5

Meta's ranges for Instagram Feed and Explore run up to 4:5, and the Feed range spans 1:1 inside it. Timeline's output.width and output.height let you set 1080x1080 or 1080x1350, both within the 256 to 2160 range and even. The same fit rules apply. If you need all three ratios, render each from the same slots with a different output size and fit, rather than cropping the 9:16 render after the fact.

Each render bills by output minute at $0.10, so three ratios of a 30-second ad is three renders, each rounded up to one minute. Use the plan endpoint to see the estimate before you run them.

Related

For a single file that covers several Meta surfaces, see one MP4 for Reels, Facebook and Threads.

A quick review routine

Export one frame from the render at the busiest moment and look at it on a phone. Check that no text is clipped at the edges, that faces are not cut through the middle, and that any blur band does not draw the eye away from the subject.

If you cannot decide between cover and blur, render a ten-second sample of each. At $0.10 per output minute the test costs a dime, and it replaces a debate with a picture. Keep the winning fit value in the slot template so every product in the campaign uses the same treatment.