The short answer

A safe zone is the part of a vertical frame that the platform's interface does not cover. On Shorts, Reels and TikTok, the account name, caption, buttons and calls to action sit on top of the video, and the largest covered area is at the bottom of the frame. Meta's ads guide states its margins as percentages in the text: for Instagram Reels ads it suggests keeping at least 14% of the top, 35% of the bottom and 6% of each side free of text, logos and other key creative elements. TikTok and Google publish downloadable safe zone templates rather than numbers in the text, and TikTok says its safe zone changes with the length of the ad caption and any interactive add-ons. The working rule for broadcast content: keep names, scores, captions and logos in the middle band of the frame, and check every template against each platform's own overlay rather than a generic grid.

Why broadcast safe areas do not carry over

Broadcast teams already work with safe areas, which is exactly why vertical versions go wrong. The EBU recommendation R 95, Safe areas for 16:9 television production (version 1.1, June 2017), defines two zones: all essential action should sit inside an Action Safe Area and all graphics inside a Graphics Safe Area. The action safe area is 3.5% and the graphics safe area is 5% at the top, bottom and sides of the image. On a 1920 x 1080 frame, a 5% margin is 96 pixels on each side and 54 lines at the top and bottom. Those margins protect a landscape picture from the edges of a television screen. They say nothing about a phone interface that covers a third of the frame from the bottom. A lower third or a ticker placed correctly for broadcast sits low in the frame and spans much of its width, and a corner score bug sits near the edge. When the picture is cut to 9:16, a full-height window keeps only about 608 of the 1,920 pixels of width, so wide graphics are cut off, corner graphics usually fall outside the window entirely, and whatever was at the bottom of the source lands under the caption and buttons.

What each platform documents

Instagram Reels: Meta's ads guide for Reels lists 9:16 at 1440 x 2560 pixels and suggests leaving at least 14% of the top, 35% of the bottom and 6% of each side clear, so that key elements are not cropped or covered by the profile icon and call to action. TikTok: the TopView ad specification says the safe zone size is determined by the ad caption length and any Interactive Add-on, so a longer caption leaves a smaller safe zone. It warns that elements outside the safe zone might be covered or cropped, that the safe zone may not cover all devices, and that the in-feed safe zone is more restrictive than the open-screen one. It provides downloadable safe zone files, including versions for right-to-left languages. YouTube: Google Ads Help on video ad specs says overlays, calls to action and buttons appear in different places depending on the format, asks advertisers to keep elements such as the logo, product and supers inside the marked safe area, and offers transparent PNG templates for horizontal, vertical and square video. It recommends 1080 x 1920 for vertical video. These are ads documents. Organic posts show a similar interface, but the platforms do not publish separate numbers for them, so the ads guidance is the best documented reference.

The arithmetic on a 1080 x 1920 frame

Applied to a 1080 x 1920 vertical frame, Meta's Reels margins are about 269 pixels at the top, 672 at the bottom and 65 on each side. That leaves a clear area roughly 950 pixels wide and 979 pixels tall, starting about 269 pixels from the top: around half the height of the frame and about 45% of its area. Two consequences follow. First, the bottom third of a vertical frame is not available for anything that has to be read, which is where a broadcast lower third would land if the picture were simply cropped. Second, the clear area is close to square, so a vertical version is best planned as a picture with a readable square band in the middle, not as a tall canvas that can be filled edge to edge with text. Treat these numbers as a starting template for Reels only. TikTok's and YouTube's templates differ, and TikTok's changes with the caption, so each platform needs its own overlay check.

Captions: the overlay you add yourself

Burned-in captions need the same care, because the usual broadcast position near the bottom of the frame is the part a vertical interface covers. Place them in the lower half of the clear area instead, above the platform's own caption and buttons, and keep line length short enough to stay inside the side margins at phone size. Broadcast caption rules offer a useful principle here. The US FCC caption quality standard on placement, 47 CFR 79.1(j)(2)(iv), says captioning shall be viewable and shall not block other important visual content on the screen, including faces and featured text such as weather or news updates, graphics and credits. That rule governs television, not social platforms, but the same test applies to a vertical edit: captions should not cover the speaker's face, the score or the graphic the story depends on. Where captions and an important graphic compete for the same band, move one of them rather than stacking them.

Moving broadcast graphics into the vertical frame

Most broadcast graphics need a decision, not a crop. Lower thirds with a name and title can be rebuilt as a shorter caption-style label placed in the clear area, or kept from the source only when the recomposed frame shows them whole. Score bugs and clocks in sport can be moved into the clear band or redrawn in a vertical-friendly position, because in a center crop they usually disappear. Tickers and crawls are designed for the full width of a landscape screen and rarely survive in 9:16; drop them unless the story is about them. Weather maps, charts and on-screen evidence in news are often the point of the segment, so the vertical layout has to show them, either by recomposing the frame so that the graphic and the presenter share it, or by cutting to the graphic full screen. Station logos and watermarks go inside the safe zone, clear of the platform's profile icon and buttons. Write these choices into a template per shot type, so that every segment follows the same rules.

Where Minute-ly.com fits

Doing this by hand for every clip is what keeps vertical output small. Minute-ly.com's Smart Composition recomposes live and on-demand 16:9 video into vertical, portrait, square and foldable outputs. Rather than holding a fixed center crop, it considers the scene and can rearrange several regions, such as a presenter and supporting footage, into a new layout, so that speakers, lower thirds, on-screen evidence, the ball, relevant players or the scoreboard can be kept in frame. Safe areas for captions and graphics are agreed for each workflow before production, sample outputs are reviewed on representative scenes, and human review can stay in the loop where editorial approval is required.

Checklist for vertical safe zones

Download the current safe zone templates from each platform you publish to, and note the date you checked them. Set up a 1080 x 1920 template per platform with its overlay as a guide layer that never exports. For Reels, keep text, logos and key elements out of the top 14%, the bottom 35% and 6% on each side. For TikTok, check the template that matches your caption length and any interactive add-ons. Decide for each broadcast graphic type, such as lower third, score bug, ticker, map and logo, whether it is kept, moved, rebuilt or dropped in the vertical version. Keep burned-in captions in the clear area and off faces and key graphics. Avoid placing anything that must be read where the template shows buttons or the profile icon. Preview every output on real phones of different heights before publishing, and check it again when a platform updates its interface.