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Reflow the story for each video format

A Motion guide for coding agents. Also covers vertical video, landscape video, square video, 9:16, 16:9, social video safe area, and 2 more.

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vertical video, landscape video, square video, 9:16, 16:9, social video safe area, responsive Remotion layout, reflow video layout

Do not scale one landscape composition down and call it a vertical version. The reading order changes with the frame.

Format profiles

  • Landscape, 1920×1080: product UI and supporting copy can share the frame
  • Vertical, 1080×1920: sequence copy and product UI; crop or recompose wide screens around the active region
  • Square, 1080×1080: keep one focal object and shorter lines
  • Portrait, 1080×1350: reserve stronger top and bottom safe areas for feed chrome

Each profile owns its safe area, grid, maximum line length, type scale, device treatment and caption region.

Responsive component rules

  • Read width and height from useVideoConfig()
  • Scale from the shorter side for balanced type and controls; use width-based scaling only for deliberately wide layouts
  • Switch layout direction when the aspect ratio changes. Do not shrink a two-column product scene until its UI is unreadable
  • Keep captions away from the product action and platform controls
  • Keep a cursor, callout or selection box inside the same transformed coordinate system as its target
  • Use auto-fit text with a minimum size and a failure path. Silent overflow is not responsive behavior

Review every target

Render representative stills in every supported format. Check the first, settled and last frame of every scene. A component that works at 16:9 has not passed vertical review.

Use this guidance in your coding agent

Install the Better Design MCP once. Your agent then loads this page with one call.

get-motion-guide({ topic: "formats-and-safe-areas" })
claude mcp add --scope user better-design --transport http https://better-design.com/api/mcp --header "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_API_KEY>"
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