YouTube Shorts technical specs
- Maximum duration: up to 3 minutes (vertical or square uploads longer than 3 minutes are categorized as standard long-form videos).
- Aspect ratio: 9:16 vertical (1080 × 1920 standard) or 1:1 square.
- Frame rates & resolution: Cuecaps exports 9:16 MP4s at 24, 25, 30 or 60 fps in 1080p on Free and Creator, plus 1440p and 4K on Pro.
When you drop a vertical clip into Cuecaps, the studio automatically locks to 9:16. If you start from a 16:9 horizontal video, switch Layout to 9:16 to crop or letterbox it.
Built-in YouTube Shorts safe-area overlay
The YouTube Shorts player stacks like, dislike, comment, remix and share buttons along the right margin, while your channel handle, title and audio link cover the bottom edge. Captions placed too low or too wide get obscured.
- Click the Show Shorts safe area icon beside the video preview in the studio to toggle the dashed safe-zone boundary.
- Drag your caption block directly on the preview canvas (a live percentage readout shows your exact vertical coordinate).
- Keep the entire width and height of two-line styles inside the dashed box so neither the bottom title nor the right-side action rail overlaps your text.
By default, Cuecaps places vertical captions roughly two-thirds down the frame—right inside the Shorts safe zone for single-line and compact presets.
Why export both a burned-in MP4 and an SRT track
YouTube's help documentation notes that automatic captions often mishear names, technical terms, accents and speech over background music. Relying on auto-CC alone also gives you plain static boxes instead of word-by-word styling.
From the same Cuecaps project, click Export to download both your burned-in animated MP4 and your corrected Subtitles (SRT, VTT). Upload the SRT in YouTube Studio so search indexing and translation tools read your exact verified transcript.
Workflow: from cut to published Short
- Drop your finished vertical cut into the studio at cuecaps.com (nothing is uploaded to a server).
- Click Find words: use On this device (free, unlimited) for clean voice tracks, or Cloud (ElevenLabs Scribe v2) for music, fast pacing and custom vocabulary hints.
- Click any word to fix typos, press E to emphasise hook words, and nudge word timing on the waveform if needed.
- Select a high-contrast preset like Bold or Karaoke and verify placement with the Shorts safe-area toggle.
- Export your 9:16 MP4 (and optional SRT or transparent MOV/WebM overlay).
The Free plan includes unlimited on-device transcription, 10 cloud minutes a month and 1080p MP4 exports with a small “Made with cuecaps.com” mark. Creator (€9 a month) removes the watermark, unlocks transparent NLE overlays and gives you 300 cloud minutes—enough for 100 full three-minute Shorts every month.
Questions
How long can a YouTube Short be in 2026?
YouTube Shorts supports vertical or square videos up to three minutes long. Cuecaps handles Shorts of any duration—and up to four hours on a single file for long-form episodes.
What resolution and frame rate should I export for Shorts?
Export 9:16 at 1080 × 1920 matching your source footage frame rate (typically 30 or 60 fps). If you shoot and deliver in 4K, the Pro plan exports 9:16 up to 2160 × 3840 at 60 fps.
Can I export transparent captions for Premiere or Resolve instead of an MP4?
Yes. On Creator and Pro, choose Transparent MOV (PNG alpha) or Transparent WebM (VP9 alpha) to drop the animated captions onto a track above your sequence in your video editor.
Try it on your video
You can also drop a file anywhere on this page. Or tryTry the demo clip