What do I check before publishing a Short?
A Short is unforgiving. It is vertical, it autoplays, and the viewer is one flick from leaving. Here is the short, specific checklist I run on every vertical clip before it goes live, plus three ways to run it.
By Thomas, founder of CutScore · Updated June 2026
A Short punishes you faster than a normal video does. There is no thumbnail to buy you a click and no description to set expectations. The clip just starts, full screen, with sound on, in a feed full of other clips doing the exact same thing. The viewer decides in about a second, and the swipe is right there under their thumb. I have shipped Shorts that died in that first second, and it was never the content. It was a slow open and a caption I could not read on my own phone.
The other trap is that you edit a Short on a big screen, in a wide timeline, with the platform interface nowhere in sight. Then it goes live and the app stacks a title, a channel name and a column of buttons on top of your frame. Your perfect caption is now half-hidden behind a "Subscribe" button. Your subject's face is sitting under the description. None of that showed up in your editor, because your editor does not draw the UI.
So the checklist for a Short is not the same as for a long video. It keeps all the craft basics, sound, picture, pacing, but it adds the things vertical makes unforgiving: framing, safe zones, and a hook that lands almost immediately. Here is the short version.
The seven-point check before you publish a Short.
Screenshot it and keep it next to your export button. Every line has a target you can hit, and every one is something a viewer scrolling a vertical feed will notice if you skip it.
| Check | Target to hit | What it costs you if you skip it |
|---|---|---|
| Aspect ratio | 9:16, 1080×1920 | A 16:9 clip gets letterboxed or cropped badly and reads as reposted, not made for the feed. |
| Safe zones | clear of the UI | Captions and faces under the title bar or the right buttons get covered the second it goes live. |
| The hook | lands by 1s | A slow logo or throat-clear and the thumb is already moving to the next clip. |
| Loudness | ≈ −14 LUFS | Too quiet and the Short feels weak next to the loud clip before it. |
| True peak | ≤ −1 dBTP | Hot peaks crackle after the platform re-encodes your vertical file. |
| Voice vs music | voice on top | Trending audio burying your words is the most common Shorts mistake. |
| Captions | big, high contrast | Most of the feed scrolls on mute, so tiny captions mean nobody reads you. |
Running seven checks on every Short adds up when you post daily. CutScore runs them in one pass and hands back the fixes, so you can keep making instead of inspecting.
Five quick passes, in order.
1. Frame and safe zones: does the UI eat your video?
Start here, because this is the one that only goes wrong on vertical. A Short is 1080 by 1920, full 9:16, and the platform draws its own interface over your frame: the title and channel along the bottom, a column of like, comment and share buttons up the right side. Pull up a real Short on your phone, note where that UI sits, and keep your captions, faces and key text out of roughly the bottom fifth and the right edge. If your subject is dead-centre and your caption is way down low, the app will cover both. This framing and safe-zone work is part of what we analyze, because on a Short the layout is half the craft.
2. The hook: earn the first second, not the first five
On a long video you get three seconds. On a Short you get about one. Watch your opening as if you were thumbing past it at speed: is there motion, a face, or a clear promise right at the top, or do you waste the first beat on a logo sting and a slow "hey guys"? If your most interesting moment is at second four, cut a piece of it onto second zero. The whole point of vertical is that the viewer never has to wait to find out whether this is worth their thumb.
3. Sound: the part everyone underestimates
Shorts autoplay with sound, so audio is not optional. Two numbers carry most of the weight. Loudness, which you want near −14 LUFS so your Short does not feel timid right after a loud one, and true peak, which you keep at or below −1 dBTP so nothing crackles once the platform squashes your file. Then the Shorts-specific trap: trending audio. That music bed is mixed loud, and if you drop it in over your voice without pulling it down, the words vanish. Listen on phone speakers. If the music is winning, cut it four or five decibels and stop being precious about it.
4. Pace and length: keep them to the end
A Short lives or dies on whether people watch the whole thing, so dead air is expensive. Watch your edit for any shot that lingers, then cut it tighter. The clearest single number is average shot length: vertical wants it short. A well-placed jump cut kills the pause where you breathe or reach for a word, and you do not need to reshoot anything. Keep the clip as long as it needs to be and not a second longer. The honest test: would you watch this to the end if it were not yours?
5. Captions and export: the last two that quietly sink you
Most of the feed scrolls on mute, so on a Short the captions basically are the video. Read them on a phone, held at arm's length: if you squint, the font is too small or the contrast is too low. Bigger text, a solid backing, kept clear of the UI. Then the part nobody screenshots: export at 1080 by 1920, a healthy bitrate, the right frame rate, upload, and watch the published version in the actual app. Platforms re-compress everything, and a vertical file that looked crisp on your drive can land soft and blocky.
Here is a real CutScore coaching report: every check above, scored, with timestamps and the exact fixes for the clip.
If you only fix three things.
Most of the jump from "reposted clip" to "made for this feed" comes from these three on a Short. Fix them first.
By eye, by meter, or in one pass.
On your phone, by eye and ear
Free, and the right instinct: watch the Short on the device it will be seen on. The catch is that your senses adapt and you cannot see the UI overlay until it is live. Use the checklist above so you are testing against targets, not vibes, and watch it once after a break.
With scopes, meters and safe-zone guides
Accurate and honest. A loudness meter, a waveform, and a safe-zone overlay in your editor. The cost is time and knowledge: you have to know the targets, open the right tools, and read them correctly for every clip. Great if you enjoy this. Most people posting daily do not.
With a coach in one pass
Hand the vertical file (or a link) to CutScore. It checks framing, safe zones, the hook, loudness, captions and export against the right standard, and gives you a 0 to 100 score with timestamped evidence and the fixes. No overlays to set up. See a sample report.
Frequently asked.
Stop guessing before the feed sees it.
CutScore runs this whole Short checklist for you and tells you exactly what to fix, with the evidence to back it up. Join the waitlist for early access.
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