How to Record Portrait and Landscape Video at the Same Time on iPhone

By Jimmy, developer of ContentCam · 5 July 2026

Every creator who posts to more than one platform hits the same wall: TikTok, Reels and Shorts want 9:16 vertical. YouTube wants 16:9 horizontal. Same content, incompatible shapes. You end up filming the piece twice, or filming once and butchering the second version in an editor.

There are three real ways to get both formats out of one shoot. I build a camera app for a living, so I'll be upfront that my app does two of them, but the trade-offs below apply whatever tool you use.

Option 1: Film portrait, crop landscape in post

The default workflow. Record vertical, drop the clip into CapCut or Premiere, set a 16:9 sequence, and scale the portrait clip until it fills the frame.

Here's the maths problem. A 1080×1920 portrait clip cropped to 16:9 gives you a 1080×607 strip, which then gets stretched to 1920×1080. You're upscaling by about three times the pixel area, from a slice that only ever contained your phone-shaped view of the scene. The result is soft, and the framing is whatever survived the chop: usually a face filling the frame with no room around it.

When it's fine: talking-head clips where the subject fills the frame anyway and the landscape version is a bonus, not a deliverable.

When it hurts: anything where the wide shot matters. Travel, vlogs, sport, product shots, anything with a background you chose on purpose.

Option 2: Record the full sensor, crop both ways at capture

Your iPhone's camera sensor isn't portrait or landscape. It's 4:3: wider than a 9:16 frame and taller than a 16:9 frame. Standard camera apps throw part of it away the moment you pick an orientation.

The smarter approach is to record the whole 4:3 frame and cut both deliverables from it at capture time:

The 9:16 portrait crop keeps the sensor's full vertical field of view.
The 16:9 landscape crop keeps the sensor's full horizontal field of view.

Neither file is a crop of the other. The landscape version actually shows more of the scene left and right than your portrait does, because that's what the sensor saw. This is how ContentCam's Single Lens mode works, and both files encode independently: 1080×1920 and 1920×1080 HEVC, or 4K equivalents. No upscaling anywhere in the chain.

ContentCam recording screen showing the portrait framing with a landscape preview tile — Recording in ContentCam: you see both framings before you press record.

Option 3: Record two cameras at once

iPhone 11 and later can run two rear cameras simultaneously. ContentCam's Dual Lens mode uses this: the wide lens records your portrait while the ultra-wide records landscape, at the same instant.

The difference from option 2 is framing. With full-sensor capture, both files show the same scene at different widths. With two lenses, your portrait can be a tight shot while your landscape is a genuinely wide establishing shot. For a piece to camera in an interesting location, that's two different shots from one take.

The honest limits: it's rear cameras only, it runs at 1080p (no phone can sustain 4K on two cameras at once), and running two cameras uses more battery.

Which one should you use?

Your situation	Best option
Talking head, face fills frame, landscape is secondary	Crop in post is fine
Both versions need to look intentional	Full-sensor capture (option 2)
You want different framing per platform	Dual Lens (option 3)
You need 4K in both formats	Full-sensor capture, it's the only one that can
Front camera	Full-sensor capture (works on the selfie cam)

Step by step in ContentCam

Open ContentCam and pick Single Lens or Dual Lens at the bottom of the record screen.
Frame your shot. The landscape preview tile shows what the 16:9 version sees, so check both before rolling. Grid and safe-zone overlays help here.
Record. One button, both files.
Stop, and the review screen shows portrait and landscape side by side. Save both, or delete the take and go again.
Files are auto-named (my_project_scene_001_Portrait.mov and _Landscape.mov) so you can't mix them up in the edit.

The free tier does all of this at 1080p with the single lens, no watermark. Premium adds Dual Lens, 4K and 60fps.

On Android?

Same problem, same fix. ContentCam for Android records both formats from the full sensor too, with manual white balance, ISO and shutter on phones that support them.

Stop filming everything twice. ContentCam is free on both stores; record a take and look at both files before deciding anything.