Chat Video Aspect Ratio and FPS: Pick the Right Export Size
Most of the effort in a chat animation goes into the conversation — the wording, the pauses, which message gets the reaction. Then the export panel gets three seconds of attention, and a clip that took twenty minutes to time goes out at the wrong size, gets letterboxed by the platform, and looks like it was made by accident.
The export settings in MockClip are short — a format, a quality, an aspect ratio, and a few display toggles — but each one has a right answer depending on where the clip is going. This guide covers the sizing decisions — aspect ratio, resolution and frame rate — with the exact dimensions behind each option and which combinations to use for which destination. For the export formats themselves (including the transparent MOV and WebM), the watermark, exporting on a phone and exporting from links, see the export settings guide.
The defaults, and when to leave them alone
Open any template and the export panel starts at MP4, 720p at 30fps, 9:16 vertical, bezel on. For a quick social clip that is a defensible set of choices, and the fastest path to a finished file is to change nothing.
Three situations call for changing them: the clip is the main subject rather than a hook, in which case raise the resolution; the destination is not a vertical video surface, in which case change the aspect ratio; or the destination cannot play video, in which case switch to GIF.
Aspect ratio
The aspect-ratio control appears when the phone bezel is turned off. With the bezel on, you are rendering a phone, and the phone's proportions decide the frame — except for the 1:1 Cropped (Square) checkbox, which appears under the bezel options on templates that support a square.
9:16 vertical is the default and the right answer for most short-form video. It is the shape TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts display full-screen, so a 9:16 clip fills the screen with no bars.
9:19.5 (iPhone) matches the proportions of a modern iPhone screen. It is taller than 9:16, which means a vertical platform will letterbox or crop it slightly — so use it when the fidelity of the phone shape matters more than filling the frame. The obvious case is a clip that will be composited onto a real phone image in an editor.
3:2 landscape is for widescreen contexts: a chat clip dropped into a YouTube video, a product page, a slide in a presentation.
1:1 square comes in two forms: framed (bezel on, 1:1 Cropped (Square)) or bare (bezel off, 1:1 (Square) in the dropdown). The six chat templates — WhatsApp, iMessage, ChatGPT, Telegram, Messenger and Instagram DM — lay the conversation out to fit the square, so the newest messages, the input bar and the keyboard all stay in shot instead of being cropped off. The iMessage notification and phone call notification templates show the top of the screen, where the banner lives. The phone call, Tinder and Reddit templates stay vertical. The square chat video guide covers writing a conversation that reads well in the smaller frame.
Exact dimensions
| Aspect ratio | 720p | Full HD |
|---|---|---|
| 9:16 vertical | 720 × 1280 | 1080 × 1920 |
| 9:19.5 iPhone | 720 × 1560 | 1080 × 2340 |
| 3:2 landscape | 1080 × 720 | 1620 × 1080 |
| 1:1 square | 720 × 720 | 1080 × 1080 |
Resolution and frame rate
Resolution and frame rate are a single setting with eight combinations: 720p or Full HD, each at 15, 24, 30, or 60 frames per second.
Resolution. Chat bubbles are mostly small text, and small text is what suffers first at lower resolutions. If the clip is the video — the viewer is reading the conversation — export Full HD. If the clip is a two-second hook, a picture-in-picture element, or will be scaled down in an edit, 720p is enough and renders faster.
Frame rate. Chat animations are not fast-moving content. Bubbles fade and scale over a fifth of a second; typing dots pulse gently. All of that reads fine at 24 or 30.
- 30fps — the default, and correct for almost everything
- 24fps — marginally more filmic, smaller files, fine for dialogue-paced clips
- 60fps — only worth it if the clip will be slowed down later, or if it sits next to 60fps footage
- 15fps — for GIFs and long sequences where file size dominates
The exported filename includes the quality setting and a timestamp, which is genuinely useful when you have rendered the same scene four times while tuning it.
MP4 or GIF
MP4 for anything going to a social platform, a video editor, or a web page with a player. It is smaller, sharper, and supports full colour.
Two more formats exist for overlays: MOV · ProRes 4444 and WebM · VP9, both with an alpha channel, for notification banners laid over other footage. They are covered in the transparent notification video guide; the size and frame-rate advice below applies to them too, with one caveat — ProRes files are large, about 3 MB per second at 720p.
GIF for destinations where a video player is awkward or unavailable: documentation, support articles, email newsletters, a repository README, a Notion or Confluence page. GIF exports are capped at 720 pixels wide regardless of the quality setting, because a full-resolution GIF of a ten-second animation is an unreasonably large file.
If you are exporting a GIF, drop the frame rate. A GIF at 15fps is roughly half the size of the same clip at 30, and the difference is barely perceptible on chat-bubble motion.
Bezel, status bar, and home indicator
These are display settings rather than export settings, but they change the exported frame, so they belong in the same decision.
Bezel. On by default. It renders the phone frame around the chat. Turn it on when the video is about a device — a phone mockup on a landing page, a demo in a product video, anything where "this is happening on a phone" is part of the message. Turn it off when the chat should fill the frame edge to edge, which is the usual choice for full-screen short-form video. The phone mockup guide covers the bezel-on style specifically.
Status bar. The iOS status row — time, signal, battery. It is forced on whenever the bezel or the square crop is active, since a phone frame without a status bar looks wrong. With the bezel off it becomes a choice: keeping it preserves the "this is a phone screen" read, dropping it gives you a cleaner frame for compositing.
Home indicator. The thin bar at the bottom. Independent toggle, same logic as the status bar.
For green-screen and compositing workflows where these toggles matter most, see the green-screen notification guide.
Picking settings by destination
| Destination | Format | Quality | Aspect | Bezel |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TikTok / Reels / Shorts, clip is the content | MP4 | Full HD 30 | 9:16 | Off |
| TikTok / Reels / Shorts, two-second hook | MP4 | 720p 30 | 9:16 | Off |
| Composited onto a real phone photo | MP4 | Full HD 30 | 9:19.5 | Off |
| Landing page hero or product demo | MP4 | Full HD 30 | 9:16 or 3:2 | On |
| YouTube video insert | MP4 | Full HD 30 | 3:2 | Either |
| Notification banner for a square feed post | MP4 | Full HD 30 | 1:1 | On |
| Chat thread for a square feed post | MP4 | Full HD 30 | 1:1 | Either |
| Documentation or newsletter | GIF | 720p 15 | 9:16 | Either |
The chat format guide covers the upstream question of which template to use in the first place, and the app mockup video guide covers how these clips fit into a wider social content plan.
Sound
Every template carries sound settings — an enable toggle and a volume control. Message send and receive sounds, call rings, and notification tones are part of what makes a mockup read as a real device.
Whether to use them is a destination question. Short-form platforms layer their own audio, and most creators mute the clip and add a trending sound in the platform editor. For a product demo, a documentation clip, or a landing-page video, the native sounds are worth keeping — they carry information the visuals do not, particularly for notification and call formats.
There is one asymmetry worth knowing: sound is easy to add later and hard to remove later. If you are unsure, export with sound enabled — a platform editor can mute a track in one tap, whereas recovering a send tone you never rendered means going back to the template and exporting again.
An example from a different template
Export settings are shared across every template, so the same panel governs a ChatGPT conversation, a Reddit thread, a Tinder swipe sequence, or an iMessage thread:
One thing does change between templates: the square option, which appears on the six chat templates and the two notification templates, but not on phone call, Tinder or Reddit.
Checking the export before you publish
Two minutes of checking saves a re-upload. Four things are worth looking at on every export.
Watch it at the size it will be viewed. A clip that reads perfectly at full width on a laptop can be illegible in a phone-sized frame. Play the exported file on your phone before you publish it. If you cannot read the last message comfortably, either the resolution is too low or the conversation is too long.
Check the first frame. Most platforms use an early frame as the thumbnail, and most chat animations open on an empty thread. If the first frame is a blank screen, consider trimming the lead-in or setting a poster frame manually wherever you are embedding it.
Check the last frame. Clips that cut on the same frame as the final bubble feel truncated. If the ending lands too abruptly, the fix is in the conversation timing — add a hold after the last message — not in the export panel.
Check the edges. If you exported with the bezel off, look at whether anything important sits near the frame edge. Platforms overlay captions, usernames, and action buttons over the bottom and right of a vertical video, and a read receipt tucked into the bottom-right corner is exactly the sort of detail that ends up underneath a share button.
Common mistakes
Exporting 9:19.5 for TikTok. It is taller than the platform's full-screen shape, so it gets letterboxed or cropped. Use 9:16 unless you have a specific reason not to.
Leaving 720p on a text-heavy clip. If the viewer has to read six messages, give them the resolution to do it.
60fps everywhere. It doubles the file size of a clip whose fastest motion is a fifth-of-a-second bubble fade. Save it for footage that will be slowed down.
GIF for social. Most social platforms convert an uploaded GIF to video anyway, usually badly. Export MP4 and let the platform do nothing.
Bezel on, then cropping in an editor. If you are going to crop the frame away, turn the bezel off before exporting and keep the pixels.
Re-rendering instead of re-timing. If a clip feels wrong, the fix is almost always the delays in the conversation, not the export settings. See why your fake chat video looks fake.
Quick start
- Build the conversation in any MockClip template and get the timing right first
- Decide whether the phone frame belongs in the shot, and set the bezel accordingly
- With the bezel off, pick the aspect ratio for your destination — 9:16 for vertical platforms
- Set quality: Full HD at 30fps if the clip is the content, 720p at 30 if it is a hook
- Leave the format on MP4 unless the destination cannot play video
- Export, and check the first frame at the size it will actually be viewed
Watermarking and export limits depend on your plan — see pricing for current details.
Related MockClip templates and guides
- All MockClip templates — every format shares the same export panel
- WhatsApp template — used for the first example above
- ChatGPT template — used for the second example
- iMessage notification template — square crop shows the banner area
- Export settings guide — every format, the watermark, mobile and link exports
- Square chat video export — 1:1 with or without the bezel
- Which chat video format should you use — picking the template
- Phone mockup video for TikTok — the bezel-on style
- App mockup videos for social media — where these clips fit in a content plan
- Green screen iPhone notification video — compositing workflow
- Pricing — plan details for exports
Frequently Asked Questions
What aspect ratio should I export a chat video in?
9:16 vertical for TikTok, Reels, and YouTube Shorts, which is the shape those surfaces display full-screen. Use the 9:19.5 option when the phone frame is visible and you want the proportions to match a modern iPhone exactly. Use 3:2 landscape for embedding in a widescreen edit or a desktop page.
What are the actual export dimensions?
At Full HD, 9:16 exports at 1080x1920, 9:19.5 at 1080x2340, 3:2 at 1620x1080, and 1:1 at 1080x1080. At 720p the same ratios export at 720x1280, 720x1560, 1080x720, and 720x720.
720p or Full HD?
Full HD if the clip is the main subject of the video, since text in chat bubbles is small and benefits from the extra resolution. 720p is fine when the clip is a two-second hook, sits in a corner of a larger composition, or is being scaled down anyway — and it renders and uploads faster.
What frame rate should I use?
30fps is the sensible default. 24fps gives a slightly more filmic cadence and smaller files. 60fps is only worth the size increase if the clip will be slowed down in an editor. 15fps exists for lightweight GIFs and very long sequences.
When should I export a GIF instead of an MP4?
Export a GIF when the destination cannot play a video conveniently — documentation, a knowledge-base article, an email newsletter, a README. For anything going to a social platform, export MP4. GIF exports are capped at 720 pixels wide to keep file sizes reasonable.
Should I show the iPhone bezel?
Show it when the video is about a phone — the frame tells the viewer instantly that they are looking at a device. Hide it when the chat needs to fill the frame edge to edge, which is the usual choice for full-screen short-form content. The bezel is on by default.
Can I export a square version?
Yes. The six chat templates (ChatGPT, iMessage, WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger and Instagram DM) lay the conversation out to fit a 1:1 square, keeping the input bar and keyboard in shot. The iMessage and phone call notification templates also offer 1:1 and show the top of the screen, where the banner sits. With the bezel on, tick 1:1 Cropped (Square); with it off, pick 1:1 (Square) in the Aspect Ratio dropdown.
Does the export include sound?
The templates include sound settings with an on/off toggle and a volume control. Whether you use them depends on the destination: most short-form platforms have their own audio layer, so many creators export silent and add sound in the platform editor.
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