The part of the frame a platform covers
A vertical placement is not a clean rectangle. Captions, handles, buttons and progress bars occupy bands at the top and bottom, and anything composed into those bands disappears behind them without changing the file at all. As of 2026-09-12.
| Part of the frame | Usually occupied by | What not to put there |
|---|---|---|
| The top band | Status and platform chrome | Logos and any line of copy |
| The bottom band | Captions, handles, controls | Subtitles, price points, a call to action |
| The right edge | Action buttons on some surfaces | Faces and product detail |
| The centre | Nothing | This is where the message belongs |
Inclusion rule. Regions of a vertical frame commonly covered by platform interface. Exact dimensions vary by surface and by device and are not stated here as figures. Order. Top of the frame first, then downward.
1A file can pass every check and still fail
Nothing about an overlay is a specification violation. The shape is right, the size is right, the duration is inside the ceiling, and the upload succeeds. The message is simply not visible to the person the ad was bought for.
That is why a delivery checklist has to include a look at the piece inside the surface rather than only in an editor. A preview at full frame is not the frame anybody sees.
2Generated footage drifts towards the edges
A model composing a vertical frame will often place a subject high, with headroom, because that is how portrait photographs are framed. In a feed that puts a face directly under the chrome.
The fix belongs in the prompt rather than in the edit. Asking for the subject centred, with clear space top and bottom, costs nothing at generation time and cannot be recovered afterwards without a crop that changes the shape.
3Burned-in copy is the most common casualty
Text rendered into the picture cannot be moved later. Where the same master is cut for several surfaces, the safe area is whichever is tightest, and copy has to sit inside the intersection of all of them.
Where the copy can be supplied as a platform feature instead of burned in, that is usually the better arrangement. It is then laid out by the surface, inside its own safe area, and it stays legible when the interface changes.
A craft note, not a spec. Nothing here is taken from a platform or a vendor, and nothing here should be quoted as a requirement. The sourced material is on published limits. Related: Inputs and outputs, Retention clocks.
4A generator's ad pipeline
For ad work around “Safe areas”, SceneMixer's pages explain how its ad projects are produced:
16:9 landscape (SceneMixer's default) and 9:16 vertical (the usual short-drama frame), chosen per project.
SceneMixer, Seedance 2.0 in a Real Short-Drama Pipeline — “Which aspect ratios does the pipeline generate?” (read 2026-10-13)
A serialized vertical-video show (typically 60–120 seconds per episode, 9:16) where the cast, scenes, and footage are AI-generated.
SceneMixer, The AI Micro Drama Production Pipeline — “What is an AI micro drama?” (read 2026-10-13)