Instagram Videos format issue

At our agency, we’re starting to notice that when we upload square videos to Instagram, that they’re being stretched into vertical format and showing up as Reels. Then when you click on the video itself, it reverts back to square. This is really frustrating our designers who are accustomed now to a square designing format. Is this happening because Instagram is doing some sort of testing for Reels performance? Do you think this is a permanent thing that our designers will just need to adapt to? Tagging in @jenn

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Well, their decision to move to more vertical “immersive” video might be at play here.

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Hey there Nancy! So excited to see you here in the SMP Community! :slight_smile:

That’s basically what I explained to my team yesterday after finding this article. It makes sense! (Although I see how it can be irritating to designers… ours are having to go back now and re-do some of their pieces to look the right way in the feed.)

Better to know now than later, right? :wink:

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…especially when he said it was just a test…although I would imagine this one will stick for a while.

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Yes, this is a combination of current testing and the new video format. IG is moving towards ALL videos looking like Reels in the feed (video uploads, Reels, Live replays, etc.). I can’t give definitive advice on how to handle this from a design component right now, because nothing definitive has been provided by IG - it’s still in “testing” mode. But, I assume we will see the move to all videos being vertical videos in the feed.

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Awesome. Thank you so much for your input… seems like we all are kind of suspecting the same thing. :smiley:

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Yeah. Very frustrating honestly. What we’ve done is just starting to shoot all Instagram vide content in 1080x1920 to be ready for this (obviously coming) change. InstaTok is going through an identity crisis but we have to keep up with their changes.

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