iMovie: How To Export/Save VERTICAL VIDEO for TikTok, Instagram, YT Shorts (No Black Bars)

In this video, I'll show you how to export vertical or portrait video in iMovie for Mac, without those annoying black bars on the sides. If you want to edit vertical videos for TikTok, Instagram Reels, RUclips Shorts or any other social platform, this is the tutorial for you.
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Have you ever tried to export vertical video from iMovie - for example, if you were making a TikTok or RUclips short - and it had the annoying black bars on the sides?
This happens because iMovie normally only supports a 16:9 widescreen export, which means that your 9:16 vertical clip appears as a thin sliver in the middle of the frame.
I’ve found the best way to get around this is firstly to rotate the clip 90 degrees counterclockwise so it fills the entire widescreen frame, and then after it’s been exported from iMovie, rotate it 90 degrees clockwise again so that it’s up the right way. And look, no more black bars!
It might sound a bit confusing, but I'll show you exactly how it's done in this easy step-by-step tutorial.

[@axedoc2010]

Thanks a ton!

[@Chadwick805]

I have been trying for the past couple of days hundreds of videos and I came across your video. I started jumping up and down because it was so simple. I can’t believe I didn’t think about it. Thank you so much. This saves me now because I can upload in 4K, because before I would have to edit those black bars, and then it would change the video quality down. I just wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. You saved me give me a follow and check out the videos that I posted out and better quality now because of you.❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@joaquinparamoasociadospsic9874]

The problem is that the video is very large in size and exceeds Instagram's requirements despite reducing its size to the limit imposed by Quick Time. Thank you

[@MsVonny]

Hi, I tried this but now my captions and titles are not rotated. only the video is. Any tips to rotate the captions and titles too?

[@whatsbestforum]

Hello Andy,
Thank you for this video!
I followed your instructions, but my title graphics did not rotate counterclockwise and then back on QuickTime player along with the iPhone video clips.
So after exporting from QuickTime player my iPhone video was oriented properly, but my iMovie title graphics were 90° out of position.
How do I fix this, please?

[@lisalisonbee4772]

great tutorial! So clear, thanks!

[@MrGheller]

Anybody here knows if an M1 Macbook Air would be capable of editing well a video recorded on Hevc or does it have to be h264?
Thinking of getting the DJI Osmo Pocket 3 and planning to edit 20 min videos on an M1 Macbook Air.
I was told I cannot record on 4k 24 fps as the computer won't be able to handle it. I was recommended to record in 1080 P 24 fps. I don't know if that will look awful or not...
Some help by people who know a lot about this would be appreciated. Thank you.

[@danieldutch8621]

It certainly is a nice trick. Thank you for sharing.
Doesn't this run a lossy encode twice on the footage though? First coming out of iMovie and then again when re-exporting from Quicktime. And then of course a third lossy encoding pass gets run by whatever social media platform you upload to. This can be quite detrimental to image quality.

[@Zendukai]

Pretty cool bud, can ya show us how on a windows platform to do the same thing?

[@emiliataubic9644]

omg thank you so much😭😵