Turn a screen recording into a vertical short
Desktop screen recordings are the hardest source to convert: the frame is wide, and the content is small text that becomes unreadable when scaled down.
The decision that matters: Legibility, not framing. A 2560×1440 recording scaled into 1080 width shrinks text to about 42% of its original size. Cropping to the region that matters usually beats scaling the whole screen.
Step by step
- Check what you actually have
Read the dimensions, ratio, duration and size off the file before deciding anything. Most bad exports come from assuming the source rather than looking at it.
Inspect the file - Work out how much your text will shrink
Scale the recording width down to 1080 and check the percentage - below roughly 50%, body text stops being readable on a phone.
Resolution scale calculator - Crop to the region that matters
Cropping to the active window or panel keeps text at native size instead of shrinking the whole desktop.
Crop calculator - Export at the vertical frame
Set the crop box to the region you identified - exact pixels, not a centred guess.
Crop precisely
What this path cannot do
- Ultrawide sources (21:9) are the worst case - almost nothing survives a 9:16 crop at readable size.
- Re-recording at a smaller screen resolution usually beats any amount of post-processing.
Koldflux runs this whole sequence automatically from one source recording.
Automate this in Koldflux