Widescreen or vertical? Choosing between a 16:9 and 9:16 asset pack
Most AssetBender packs ship in two editions — one built for 16:9 timelines and one for 9:16. Here is what actually differs between them, and how to pick.
Open the MotionBender library and you will notice something: the same pack often appears twice. Murder Mystery and Murder Mystery Shorts. Geo Politics and Geo Politics Shorts. They are not duplicates, and buying one does not get you the other. This is what separates them.
The short answer
- Editing for YouTube, a client deliverable, or anything landscape → the widescreen 16:9 edition.
- Editing for Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, or TikTok → the vertical 9:16 edition, the one whose name ends in Shorts.
If you cut both, you need both. They are sold separately, and both are included in a library subscription.
What actually differs
The two editions carry the same creative direction — the same look, the same theme, usually the same number of scenes and text styles. What changes is the canvas they were built on.
| Widescreen 16:9 | Vertical 9:16 | |
|---|---|---|
| Sequence | 1920×1080 | 1080×1920 |
| Built for | YouTube, long-form, client edits | Reels, Shorts, TikTok |
| Titles and lower thirds | composed across the full width | kept clear of the bottom of the frame |
That last row is the part people underestimate. Every vertical platform draws its own interface over your video — captions, the username, the like and share column, the caption expander. A lower third that sits beautifully in a landscape edit lands underneath a row of platform buttons once it is in a 9:16 feed. The vertical editions are laid out with that dead zone already accounted for.
Why not just crop the widescreen one?
You can, and for a full-frame background element it is often fine. Where it falls apart is anything with type or layout in it.
Scaling a 1920×1080 graphic to fill a 1080×1920 frame means enlarging it to roughly 178% and throwing away about 44% of the width. A title that was centred survives. A lower third anchored to the left edge, a three-column infographic, a logo bug in the corner — those get cut, or get so large they stop reading as design and start reading as a mistake.
There is a second, quieter problem: enlarging a raster element past 100% softens it. Vector and shape-based MOGRT elements scale cleanly, but anything pre-rendered does not.
Which packs come in both
As of September 2026, eight packs in the MotionBender library ship in both editions:
- Mad Creator
- Geo Politics
- Money Mechanics
- Adrenaline Strike
- Ancient Echo
- Essentials Kit
- The 360 View
- Murder Mystery
Two are vertical only — Branding Persona and Merchant Magnate, both aimed at short-form brand and product content. The current, live list is always on the products page, where each pack's page states its format outright.
How to tell which one you are looking at
Every pack page names its format in the first line, and again in the chip row under the title — Shorts 9:16 or the widescreen equivalent. The pack's own FAQ names its opposite edition by name, so you can jump straight across if you picked up the wrong one.
A note on mixed workflows
If you are cutting one long-form video and pulling verticals out of it, the practical order is: finish the 16:9 edit first, then rebuild the vertical version in a 1080×1920 sequence using the vertical pack rather than nesting and scaling the landscape one. It is faster than it sounds, because the two editions share a design language — the vertical version of a title looks like the same title, not a different one.
Both editions install the same way, through the free AssetBender manager app, and appear inside the MotionBender panel in Premiere Pro.