How to add captions and a facecam to vertical gaming clips
Your stream is horizontal. The feed is vertical. Getting both your face and the game into a 9:16 frame, with captions people can read, is what makes a gaming clip look native.
6 minute read. Updated November 10, 2026.
Facecam layouts for 9:16
There are three layouts that work for most GTA clips:
Stacked: camera on top, game below
The most common layout for streamer clips. The facecam fills roughly the top third, the gameplay the bottom two thirds. Both are large enough to read on a phone, and your reaction is never hidden. Use this by default.
Picture in picture
Gameplay fills the frame and the camera sits in a small box near the top. Good when the game needs as much space as possible, like wide chase shots, but your reaction is smaller.
Gameplay only
No camera at all. The right choice when you don't stream with one, or when the moment is purely visual. Crop the gameplay to follow the action rather than shrinking the whole frame into the middle.
Cropping gameplay well
A 16:9 frame cropped to 9:16 loses most of its width, so you have to choose what to keep. In GTA, that is usually the player character and whatever they are reacting to.
- For on-foot moments, centre on the character.
- For driving, keep the vehicle slightly below centre so the road ahead is visible.
- For chases, follow the action as it moves, rather than locking the crop in place.
- Remove the HUD if it clutters the frame, unless it is part of the joke, like a wanted level jumping.
Caption styles that stay readable
- Big and bold. Captions must be readable on a phone at arm's length. If you need to squint on your monitor, they are too small.
- High contrast. Light text with a dark outline or shadow stays readable over bright skies and dark nights alike.
- A few words at a time. Two to five words per caption, timed to speech, are easier to follow than full sentences.
- Consistent. Pick a style and keep it across clips. It becomes part of how people recognise your channel.
The hook caption
Separate from the speech captions, a short line at the start tells the viewer why to keep watching: “five stars and an airboat. what could go wrong”. Keep it on screen for the first two or three seconds.
Where to place captions and the camera
Every platform overlays buttons and text on your video. The bottom fifth of the frame and a strip down the right side are the riskiest areas. Put speech captions in the middle band, roughly where the facecam and gameplay meet in a stacked layout. Keep the facecam out of the bottom corners entirely.
Our format guide has more on safe zones for each platform.
Getting captions accurate
Automatic transcription has become good, but gaming audio is hard: overlapping voices, explosions, slang and character names. Always read through generated captions before posting. Wrong words in a punchline kill the joke, and wrong names annoy communities, especially on RP servers.
Doing it automatically
Building this by hand in an editor takes a few minutes per clip once you have a template. aiclipmaker is built to do it as part of every export: find your facecam, stack it over the gameplay, crop the game to the action, and burn in captions inside the safe zone. You can still adjust the result before you download it.