The Cutdown Matrix

One shoot. Dozens of deliverables. Here's everything to pull from a single music video, broken down by where it's going and what size it needs to be.

The most expensive mistake independent artists make with video is treating the finished music video as the deliverable. It isn't — it's the source. One shoot holds enough material for weeks of posting, and the only thing separating the artists who get that from the artists who don't is whether they planned the cutdowns before the shoot or after.

The math: a three-minute music video is about 180 seconds of finished picture, cut from one to three hours of usable footage. Posting a single 16:9 upload from that uses roughly 3% of what you paid for.

By platform

Every platform wants something different out of the same footage — a different shape, a different length, a different energy. Here's one platform at a time: what to pull, how many, and the exact size to export it at.

YouTube — 2–3 uploads

Deliverable	Description	Spec
Final music video	The anchor. Lives here permanently and every link you post points back to it.	16:9 · 1920 × 1080 (or 3840 × 2160) · MP4
Long-form BTS videos ×1–2	Two to ten minutes each. Horizontal outtakes straight from camera, you explaining what you did to make the video, funny moments between takes, bloopers, and shots that didn't make the cut — with your song playing underneath.	16:9 · 1920 × 1080 · 2–10 min · MP4

YouTube Shorts — 7–11 clips

Deliverable	Description	Spec
Lyric clips from the finished video ×3–5	Clips pulled from the final cut with lyrics typed over them.	9:16 · 1080 × 1920 · under 3 min
Cutdowns of your long-form BTS ×2–4	The best moments from the BTS videos, reframed vertical.	9:16 · 1080 × 1920 · under 3 min
Selected portions of the final video ×2–3	Straight excerpts, no text — the strongest visual moments standing alone.	9:16 · 1080 × 1920 · under 3 min

Instagram — 9–19 posts

Deliverable	Description	Spec
Teaser reels ×1–2	Posted as reels, or as trial reels if you want to test them before they hit your followers.	9:16 · 1080 × 1920 (1440 × 2560 for max quality)
Sound design / a cappella shots ×1–2	One or two shots running with sound design, or an a cappella version of the track underneath.	9:16 · 1080 × 1920
Lyric clips ×5–10	Clips from the music video with lyrics cut over them.	9:16 · 1080 × 1920
Frame grabs & stills ×1–2 posts	Edited frames or stills from the music video, captioned with the release announcement.	4:5 · 1080 × 1350 (1440 × 1800 preferred)
BTS carousels ×1–3 posts	Photos from set, funny moments, the parts of the day that didn't look like the final video.	4:5 · 1080 × 1350 · up to 20 per carousel

TikTok — 10–20 clips

Deliverable	Description	Spec
BTS, funny moments, bloopers ×5–10	The rawest material you have. This is the footage that doesn't work anywhere else and works best here.	9:16 · 1080 × 1920 · 10 min max on upload
You talking ×5–10	What the song means to you, how you made the video, how you edited it, your favorite shot, what you're most proud of.	9:16 · 1080 × 1920

Spotify Canvas — 1 loop

Deliverable	Description	Spec
Silent looping video	Three to eight seconds of selected vertical shots from the music video. Runs behind every single stream of the song.	9:16 · 720 × 1280 · 3–8 sec · MP4 · no audio track

Profile pictures, banners, and cover art sizes live in The Release Label Visuals Checklist.

Count your own shoot

Plan the matrix before the shoot, not after

Two decisions on set make all of this possible, and both are free if you make them in advance.

Frame for the crop — Shoot wider than your 16:9 needs, or shoot open-gate, so there's room to reframe vertically without losing the subject. Retrofitting a vertical cut out of a tight 16:9 frame is where cutdowns go to die.

Assign someone to BTS — One person with a phone, all day, shooting both horizontal and vertical. Most of your TikTok and half your Instagram comes from that person, and nothing else on the call sheet produces it.

Safe margins beat resolution

Keep anything that needs to be read — faces, lyrics, logos — inside the safe area.

Instagram ReelsAction buttons in the right ~180px

TikTokAction buttons in the right ~180px

YouTube ShortsCentral 4:5 — no text in the bottom 10–15%

Platform	Top	Bottom	Sides	Note
Instagram Reels	108px	320px	60px	Action buttons in the right ~180px
TikTok	130px	250px	60px	Action buttons in the right ~180px
YouTube Shorts	central 4:5 (1080 × 1440)	—	60px	No text in the bottom 10–15%

All measured against a 1080 × 1920 frame. Platforms adjust their interfaces without notice — re-check before a big release.

Then: hold back four to six clips you never posted. When something unexpectedly catches, you'll want material to follow it with that same week to keep momentum.