Crop-based analysis finds shots where the subject is off-centre, headroom is excessive, or the frame doesn't fill safely for vertical reformat. Essential before creating Shorts.
Face detection identifies where the primary subject is positioned in the frame. When the face centroid falls significantly outside the compositional centre or the rule-of-thirds intersection zones for more than a configurable minimum duration, the section is flagged. The detector distinguishes between deliberate off-centre composition and accidental drift.
When the detected face position leaves too much empty space above the subject's head relative to the frame height. Excessive headroom is a common issue when shooting with wide angles, when subjects move closer to camera than expected, or when the operator didn't adjust framing for seated vs. standing subjects.
When creating 9:16 Shorts from 16:9 footage, a centred crop will exclude content at the left and right edges. This check simulates the 9:16 crop and warns if key content (including a detected face) would be cut off or pushed to the edge of the vertical frame. Essential to run before using Create Shorts.
Reformatting 16:9 content to 9:16 for Reels, Shorts and TikTok is one of the most common editorial workflows in 2026. But not all 16:9 footage works as a vertical crop — subjects shot wide, or positioned off-centre, end up cut off or poorly framed in the vertical format.
EditLint AI's framing detector simulates the 9:16 crop region on your 16:9 frame and checks whether the detected face and significant content areas are safely inside the crop. Sections that would produce a poor vertical frame are flagged before you ever hit Create Shorts.
The on-device face detection model locates all faces in sampled frames and records the bounding box and centroid position for the primary (largest) face. This runs on the same sampled frames used by other detectors so no additional decoding is required.
The primary face position is compared against the compositional rules enabled in your settings: centre zone, rule-of-thirds zones, headroom ratio and vertical crop safety zone. Each rule has a configurable threshold so you can tighten or relax the detector for your specific shooting style.
Sections failing one or more compositional checks receive a severity-ranked marker. The marker comment identifies which rule was violated, the measured value vs. the threshold, and whether the section would be safe for a 9:16 vertical crop. Jump to each marker to review in context before deciding on a fix.
Know which shots are safe for vertical crop before you create Shorts. Find every framing problem before it becomes a problem on your audience's phone.