With more and more people sharing videos on Instagram, it's important to find a way to add it to your toolbox. Since Instagram is a square format, it's a little bit more complicated to create something that looks professional if you're shooting videos in 16:9 (as pretty much everyone is), but Kraig Adams from Wedding Film School shows us how (while FCP X is shown, you can use any editor for final product):


Here are Kraig's steps for this:

How to create your own advanced Instagram video preview with text/images/motion:

  1. Edit together your 14 second sequence on a custom 640x640 timeline.
  2. Add text, photos or a video wrapper to your timeline.
  3. Export the video at 640x640 resolution, .MOV file format and H.264 compression.
  4. Place the video file in your dropbox folder or email yourself the file.
  5. Save the video file inside dropbox or your Mail app to your camera roll.
  6. Upload video to Instagram.

How to create your own basic Instagram video preview with simple white/black bars:

  1. Edit together your 14 second sequence on a 16x9 aspect ratio timeline.
  2. Export the video at native resolution, .MOV file format and H.264 compression.
  3. Place the video file in your dropbox folder or email yourself the file.
  4. Save the video file inside dropbox or your Mail app to your camera roll.
  5. Edit video within SquareadyV app (iOS) or Video Squarer (Android)

While weddings are the subject of the video, this sort of thing can really be used for anything from films to music videos to corporate videos. You may have your own workflow to accomplish the same thing, so feel free to share below. 

Source: Wedding Film School