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A format is a crop with a job, not a quality setting. The same house can be right in all three shapes and wrong in the one you export without looking. Decide where this particular file is going, then open the project in that shape.
PropertyCuts offers three exports:
| Shape | Project size | Usually watched |
|---|---|---|
| Landscape, 16:9 | 1920 × 1080 | Listing pages, agency websites, YouTube and other wide players |
| Portrait, 9:16 | 1080 × 1920 | Full-screen phone placements such as Reels and Stories |
| Square, 1:1 | 1080 × 1080 | Feeds where a tall crop would cut the building in half |
Platform details change, and a social app may accept other shapes or crop them further once you upload. Treat the table as the decision inside PropertyCuts, then glance at the preview in the network you are posting to. Do not rely on a remembered pixel limit from last year.
What each shape does to a property
Landscape is the shape of most property photography and of a player set into a webpage. Facades, open-plan rooms and gardens sit naturally in it. You can leave a little sky. Text can sit in a lower corner without covering the building. Use it when someone has chosen to look at this home: a listing, a brochure page, an email to a vendor.
Portrait is a full phone screen. The sides of a landscape photograph are the first thing to go. A facade composed with garden either side can become sky, a slice of roof and no front door. Move the crop so the building stays central, and accept that you may need a tighter photograph than the one that looked best in 16:9. Type has to be larger, and it has to sit clear of the top and bottom, where captions and buttons often cover a Story or a Reel.
Square keeps more of a wide building than portrait does, and it takes less vertical space in a feed than a landscape film that has been letterboxed. It is a practical compromise when the same cut has to live in a grid and you cannot justify a separate portrait edit. It is a poor compromise when the storey height of the house is the thing you need to show. Tall rooms and full facades suffer in a square crop almost as much as they do in a careless portrait one.
Review the crop, not just the sequence
Whatever the shape, PropertyCuts fits photographs and clips without stretching them. A picture can cover the frame and be cropped, or it can be contained with space around it. Cover is usually right for a photograph that was composed for this shape. Contain is the honest choice when cropping would remove the house. Empty margin is better than a distorted elevation.
For every hero frame, ask three questions in the preview:
- Is the building, rather than the sky or the floor, what remains?
- Can you still tell how wide the room is?
- Does any text sit on a busy part of the picture, or so close to the edge that a phone interface will cover it?
If the answer fails, change the crop or swap the asset. Do not export and hope the feed will be kind. This matters even more if you later animate a still. ImageMotion fills the project shape, so a bad crop becomes the moving scene, not a border you can fix afterwards.
One project, one export
The format is chosen when the project is created, and the MP4 you export uses that format. Switching a finished landscape timeline into a portrait file is not a separate button at the end. If you need the listing page and a Reel, make the landscape film for the page and a portrait film for the phone, and review each crop. Shared branding and the same room order will keep them related. The pictures inside them may not be identical, and they should not be if the wide exterior dies in 9:16.
That is more work than a single render of three shapes, and it is the work that stops a bad crop going live. Start with the format that has a deadline. Add the second only when the first is approved.
A portrait cut also wants a different edit, not only a different frame. Open on the single strongest image, put the place and the facts on screen immediately, and stop before you have toured every bedroom. Ideas for that shorter film are in property video ideas for Reels and social. The longer room-by-room version belongs in landscape, and the way to build it from stills is in how to create a property video from photos.
Put the format in the brief
Tell the person shooting, and the person posting, which file is which. “The video” is how a 16:9 master ends up posted as a Story. Name them: listing landscape, Reel portrait, feed square. If an agency needs the same order and logo on each, that is a branding habit, covered in branded property videos for agents and realtors.
On the next project, choose the shape before you upload. The sequence is much easier to judge when you are looking at the crop your viewer will actually get.