HBO Max is embracing vertical video as part of its efforts to make it easier to discover new content and improve the user experience on mobile devices with the launch of two new features that provide U.S. subscribers with new ways to browse, sample, and explore its premium library of programming.

“HBO Max Shorts” is designed to help users discover something to watch by highlighting iconic and memorable scenes from the HBO Max library in a vertical, scrollable feed.

Users can tap the “Shorts” icon on the bottom navigation menu to browse trailers, clips, and bonus content, making it easier to discover a new favorite series or film. Content within a user’s feed is customized to individual tastes and preferences based on watch history. If a title sparks a user’s interest, they can start watching immediately or add it to “My List” directly from the feed.

This feature is initially being tested with select iOS users in the U.S. and then will be rolled out across more devices and markets.

The clips for this feature are powered by an AI tool built in-house, which helps human editors select and verticalize content by using machine learning algorithms that utilize scene-level metadata to comb through thousands of hours of titles and suggests the most compelling, high-impact scenes for discovery.

Once the tool has suggested these clips, HBO Max editors decide which best represent the stories viewers love and capture jaw dropping moments, pivotal plot twists, and visually stunning sequences. These clips are then rendered in a new vertical video experience to ensure seamless playback.

Looking ahead, "HBO Max Shorts” will expand to include additional devices and markets, incorporate sports content, and refine as users interact with the feature.

"We're thrilled to launch this application of AI to accelerate the creation of these clips and look forward to quickly expanding to make even more of our amazing content offering discoverable through this new feature,” explained Deepna Devkar, senior vice president of machine learning engineering at HBO Max.

Along with the new vertical shorts feed, HBO Max also announced an experimental conversational search experience.

Initially available for adult users in the U.S., on Android mobile and accessible from the search page under “Ask HBO Max,” this experience uses natural language understanding and semantic search to interpret the intent behind a query and recommend relevant videos, even when the exact search terms aren't present in the metadata.

Select subscribers can now search for terms such as “in the mood for a comedy” or "dysfunctional family drama" or "best movie for a girls night in,” to find relevant content. Availability of this feature will also eventually be rolled out to more devices and markets.

“These new mobile features build on intuitive, familiar behaviors subscribers use every day. Both ‘HBO Max Shorts’ and ‘conversational search’ translate those behaviors into new ways to discover programming across the HBO Max service, making it easier and more seamless for subscribers to find something to watch," said Liesel Kipp, executive vice president, product management, Warner Bros. Discovery.

As more major media and entertainment companies jump on the vertical video bandwagon and tech providers launch products to streamline its creation, analysts at LightShed Partners are pouring cold water over Hollywood’s approach to the format.

In a note to investors, LightShed analysts Richard Greenfield, Brandon Ross and Mark Kelley said, “We believe the strategy behind almost all of these products, including Netflix, is dead wrong and misses the far larger opportunity in mobile vertical video content.”

In recent days, Netflix launched a vertical video feed in its mobile app, joining Disney+ (Verts), ESPN (Verts), Peacock (Clips), Paramount+ (Clips), and CNN (Shorts). All are responding to the growing popularity of vertical video particularly among younger audiences.

At NAB Show earlier this month, AWS launched new AI-powered tools to automate vertical video creation creation of vertical video, with data showing Gen Z viewers consume 88% of the streaming content they watch on their phones, and that users are spending more time watching vertical video than content from Netflix, Disney+ or Prime Video on their phones.

While some companies like The New York Times and CNN have been creating compelling original vertical video content, “none of the major media companies are willing to take a small portion of their massive content budgets to attack original vertical programming for mobile devices,” the LightShed analysts said.

“While it is great to see so many media companies launching vertical content for mobile devices, creating clips of existing content is underwhelming at best,” they argued. “We doubt users spend meaningful time watching short clips of long-form content, and these feeds certainly do not make you want to come back regularly the way dedicated mobile entertainment apps do.”

“Only CNN is making its own original programming specifically formatted for vertical mobile viewing,” they noted. Worse, the analysts argued, some of the repurposed content for vertical video is badly done. “ESPN and Paramount+ are simply reformatting horizontal content into a vertical feed, and it looks awful, with text impossible to read,” they said.

Read the full post, along with examples of vertical video being produced, here.

After updating its TV user interface last year, Netflix is now making a big push to improve its mobile user experience with streamlined navigation and visual, vertical content discovery.

As part of that effort, Netflix is embracing vertical video with the launch of “Clips,” a vetical feed that offers a personalized highlight reel to help users discover content. On Clips, users can watch short clips from series, films and specials tailored to a user’s tastes.

The launch highlights the growing importance of vertical video for streaming platforms.

“Mobile is an important part of how Netflix members stay connected to the entertainment they love,” Netflix Chief Product and Technology Officer Elizabeth Stone said. “With our enhanced navigation and Clips, our new vertical video feed, we’re building on past learnings to deliver an experience designed for the way members want to enjoy Netflix on their phones: for the moments in between, to discover a new title, or a quick laugh. Our vision is to make our mobile experience as entertaining as what you watch, delivering increasingly personalized, immersive experiences for any mood or moment. This is just the beginning.”

These updates were launched on April 30 in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Canada, India, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines and South Africa, and will roll out worldwide in the months to come.

In a notable example of how important mobile users and vertical video on social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube have become to the media industry, Disney+ is launching Verts, a new vertical video offering that the company calls the first phase of bringing more vertical video content to the platform.

The launch follows earlier experiments with vertical video on Disney+ and the launch of Verts on ESPN Unlimited in August. Disney formally announced plans to launch Verts in January at Disney’s 2026 Global Tech & Data Showcase.

Disney said that those tests produced increased viewer engagement and that the launch this week is just the first phase of its plans for vertical video.

Initially, Verts is focused on content discovery. At launch users can access Verts with a tap of the new Verts icon in the navigation bar on mobile that allows them to enter a vertical video feed. They can then swipe through a stream of scenes and moments from movies and shows on Disney+, and seamlessly add to their Watchlist or jump directly into playback, Disney reported.

“With the latest streaming hits and an incredible catalog spanning more than 100 years of storytelling, we’re making it easier for fans to discover what to watch next,” Disney announced. “Verts offers a fun, fast way to explore that catalog right from the moment users open the app. It brings the magic of Disney’s storytelling into a format that feels modern, engaging, and tailor-made for how fans already enjoy discovering video on mobile devices.”

Looking forward, Disney said that its teams are “exploring and experimenting with ways to expand far beyond content discovery. Over time, Verts will play a key role in fans’ everyday experience on Disney+. At launch, this includes driving discoverability across Disney’s entertainment catalog, with opportunities in the future to add content from creators that reflects our fandoms, plus other storytelling formats, content types, and personalized experiences.”

AWS has launched a new service that uses artificial intelligence to convert video into vertical formats optimized for mobile and social platforms in real time.

The company is touting its new AWS Elemental Inference, as a tool that will help broadcasters and streamers reach audiences on social and mobile platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts without manual post-production work or AI expertise.

Although today’s viewers consume content differently than they did even a few years ago, most live broadcasts are still produced in landscape format for traditional viewing. Converting these broadcasts into vertical formats for mobile platforms typically requires time-consuming manual editing that causes broadcasters to miss viral moments and lose audiences to mobile-first destinations, according to AWS.

AWS Elemental Inference uses an agentic AI application by analyzing video in real time and automatically applies the right optimizations at the right moments. Detection of vertical video cropping and clip generation happens independently, executing multistep transformations that require no human intervention to extract value.

AWS Elemental Inference analyzes video and automatically applies AI capabilities with no human-in-the-loop prompting required. IT applies AI capabilities in parallel with live video, achieving 6-10 second latency compared to minutes for traditional post-processing approaches. This “process once, optimize everywhere” method runs multiple AI features simultaneously on the same video stream, eliminating the need to reprocess content for each capability.

The service integrates seamlessly with AWS Elemental MediaLive, so AI features can be enabled without modifying existing video architecture. AWS Elemental Inference uses fully managed foundation models (FMs) that are automatically updated and optimized, so no dedicated AI teams or specialized expertise are needed.

Regina Rossi, head of product for AWS Media Services explained how development of the tool was driven in large part by live sports and the importance of using metadata in the conversion process.

“One of the things we’ve been hearing from our customers is that they need help when it comes to understanding the context of what's happening in their video—in particular, live sports which is their most valuable content,” Rossi said. "So we wanted to provide them with the appropriate metadata that gives them the ability to transform their video in a way that's meaningful.

“They want to meet their viewers where they are more and by that I mean, a lot more of their viewers were watching content on mobile phones as an example,” she added. “And for them to be able to be formatted for that mobile native viewer, they had to convert their horizontal video into vertical video. And so what we wanted to be able to do was actually use the right set of x, y coordinates, and be able to create things like a saliency map so that the focus of that video is going to be in that vertical frame.

“So when you're watching it on a phone, it actually moves with the action, so you're not missing out on what's happening in a scene.”

One of AWS’s earliest customers, Fox Sports Digital, reinforced how important vertical video is to the network, Rossi said, adding that “90% of their content is actually consumed vertically.”

Rossi emphasized that unlike earlier efforts in this space, AWS Elemental’s AI architecture is not just about “following the ball” during live play. The company has tested the technology on a variety of sports and found that a lot of them actually lend itself well to a vertical format, according to Rossi.

“Ones that might be harder are things like tennis, where you have a ball that's traveling really fast between opposite sides of the court. But even then, one of the things that we do is we make adjustments to some of the foundation models that we use,” she said. “So as an example, we're not doing just object tracking. We're not just following a ball back and forth. What we're doing is actually creating a saliency map, so understanding where the action is happening in a scene, and so we're able to then follow the action, not just the ball.”

Key Features at Launch

• Vertical video creation – AI-powered cropping intelligently transforms landscape broadcasts into vertical formats (9:16 aspect ratio) optimized for social and mobile platforms. The service tracks subjects and keeps key action visible, maintaining broadcast quality while automatically reformatting content for mobile viewing.
• Clip generation with advanced metadata analysis – Automatically detects and extracts clips from live content highlights for real-time distribution. For live broadcasts, this means identifying game-winning plays, touchdowns, and emotional peaks with precise start and end points—reducing manual editing from hours to minutes.

Now Available
AWS Elemental Inference is available today in 4 AWS Regions: US East (N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Europe (Ireland), and Asia Pacific (Mumbai). AWS Elemental Inference can be activated through the AWS Elemental MediaLive console or integrate it into workflows using the APIs.

Customers pay only for the features used and video processed, with no upfront costs or commitments, meaning that customers can scale during peak events and optimize costs during quieter periods. More features and capabilities will be introduced throughout this year, including tighter integration with core Elemental services and features to help customers monetize their video content better.

Big Blue Marble has been named as Launch Partner with AWS Elemental Inference integrated into Big Blue Marble’s cloud-native Cloud Video Kit platform

The company will demo AWS Elemental Inference at its Booth (W1701) in the West Hall during the 2026 NAB Show, April 18-22 in Las Vegas.

To learn more about AWS Elemental Inference, visit the AWS Elemental Inference product pag

As mobile-first consumption reshapes the media landscape, broadcasters must transform their workflows to meet the demands of a digital-native audience. Those who innovate today will define the future of news tomorrow.

The news industry is experiencing a profound transformation as mobile-first content consumption takes center stage. Audiences increasingly rely on their smartphones for real-time updates, pushing broadcasters to rethink traditional workflows that were once designed exclusively for linear television. This shift is not merely a change in platform; it's a redefinition of how news is created, distributed, and experienced.

The Rise of Mobile-First News Consumption
Mobile-first consumption has been accelerating for years, and recent data underscores its dominance. In the last quarter of 2024, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 62.5% of global website traffic. In the United States, mobile accounted for 65.8% of all digital ad spending in 2024, highlighting the clear shift toward mobile platforms. For news organizations, this represents both a challenge and an opportunity.

Major networks are making significant investments to stay competitive. For example, CNN invested $70 million into its digital transformation, prioritizing mobile-friendly, on-demand content. This trend is driven by a younger, mobile-first generation of news consumers who expect instant access to personalized, bite-sized content.

Meeting these expectations requires more than just repurposing linear TV content; it demands rethinking the entire content lifecycle—an overhaul that prioritizes speed, platform optimization, and audience engagement.

Overcoming Challenges with Legacy Workflows
Adapting to mobile-first news consumption is not a simple task. Traditional broadcast workflows are heavily optimized for large-screen, scheduled programming. In contrast, mobile consumption demands content that is easily reformatted, quickly distributed, and personalized for individual viewing habits.

The challenge lies in transforming legacy workflows that are often siloed and rigid. In the past, content was produced for a single format and distributed to a single platform. Today, audiences expect content to be available across multiple platforms in a variety of formats, including vertical video optimized for smartphones. For broadcasters to remain relevant in this rapidly changing, mobile-first era, they must adapt to efficiently reformatting and delivering content in real-time.

One significant barrier to this adaptation is the segmentation of content across different departments and platforms that exist within news production organizations. Traditional newsrooms often maintain very separate teams and process for linear broadcasting from digital production, resulting in duplicated efforts and slower distribution speeds.

To truly embrace mobile-first strategies, news organizations must break down these silos, enabling seamless content flow from creation to distribution. This approach not only accelerates time-to-market but also enhances audience reach by ensuring the efficient optimization of content for every screen. Broadcasters which fail to transform risk losing their competitive edge, especially as younger audiences continue to embrace mobile-first habits.​

The Role of AI in Modernizing News Workflows
Artificial intelligence is emerging as a critical tool in modernizing news workflows. Through automation, AI enables broadcasters to optimize content for various platforms without the need for manual intervention. This capability is crucial for keeping up with the pace of mobile consumption.

One key area where AI is driving innovation is in content personalization. Machine learning algorithms can analyze audience behavior and preferences to deliver targeted news updates, ensuring that stories are relevant and engaging. Furthermore, AI-driven automation can reformat content dynamically—whether it's vertical video for mobile or curated feeds for personalized viewing experiences.

For example, AI can identify trending topics and automatically curate video snippets from existing longer-form video, optimized for mobile consumption. This reduces the time required for manual editing and accelerates the speed at which breaking news reaches audiences anytime on any device. In an era where immediacy is critical, this capability is redefining what it means to be first with the story.

AI is also instrumental in multilingual distribution, automatically translating and reformatting content for different regions and demographics. This enables global reach with localized precision, ensuring that audiences receive news in their preferred language and format almost instantaneously.

The Shift Toward Vertical Video
One of the most significant transformations in mobile-first news consumption is the rise of vertical video. Traditionally, news content was produced in landscape format, optimized for television screens. However, as mobile devices have become the primary medium for news consumption, vertical video is rapidly emerging as the preferred format.

Vertical video is not just a change in aspect ratio; it represents a shift in audience behavior. Mobile users expect to engage with news content seamlessly as they scroll through social media feeds and news apps. This expectation is pushing broadcasters to rethink content strategies, ensuring stories are not only mobile-optimized but also immersive and interactive.

Leading news organizations are experimenting with mobile-first video formats, creating live streams, interactive news updates, and social-first clips designed for vertical consumption. This evolution marks a departure from traditional broadcast storytelling, moving toward dynamic, real-time engagement with audiences.

The demand for instant, mobile-optimized news is only expected to grow, and vertical video stands at the forefront of that shift. For newsrooms willing to adapt, this format offers unprecedented opportunities to engage viewers directly where they are - on their mobile screens.

Embracing the Mobile-First Era
The mobile-first era is not merely a trend; it is a redefinition of how news is consumed, shared, and trusted. Broadcasters that can seamlessly adapt to these new demands— producing vertical video, personalizing content, and optimizing distribution – will not just remain competitive; they will lead the next wave of media evolution. The path forward requires more than adaptation; it demands innovation, foresight, and a willingness to break from traditional molds.

In this mobile-centric landscape, those who prioritize mobile platform-native storytelling and agile content strategies will set the standard for the future of news. The question is no longer whether mobile-first consumption will dominate, it's about who will lead the revolution. For forward-thinking newsrooms, the opportunity to define the next era of media is here, and the time to act is now.

At 22 Frith Street in London there’s a plaque commemorating the first demonstration of moving images not involving film. A purist might point out that John Logie Baird’s television system was a mechanical monstrosity which could never have achieved even standard definition. Either way, those early experiments produced a dim, low-resolution image which was updated at less than ten frames per second—and was portrait in aspect ratio.

So, the fascination with tall, thin movies on Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat might seem less like a new idea than a reincarnation of a very old one. The demand for material which works in those portrait frames isn’t really new, although a lot of what’s been released in portrait formats has been repurposed, sometimes rather approximately, from conventional landscape pictures. 

It’s perhaps inevitable in 2023 that AI has been pressed into service to automate conversions. When new material is being shot, meanwhile, it’s increasingly normal to target a portrait frame—or even derive both tall and wide frames from a single camera.

‘Just for Social?’
Leonidas Jaramillo is a DP and creative director with a background in camera and the allied trades of real-time interactive simulation for entertainment and virtual production. Jaramillo’s experience dates back to an experiment—not followed up—for Marvel in 2012. 

“There was a movie called ‘Captain America: The Winter Soldier’ and we were going to make living portraits for the movie posters,” Jaramillo explained. “The plan was to have all these TVs flipped vertically in the little windows you have in front of movie theaters. I came from photography, and I was an IATSE member as well, and they enlisted me. I created movie posters of each of the characters, moving in the frame.”

Jaramillo quickly realized that the demand for sheer picture quality might not be much less than that facing the main unit of a major motion picture. 

“We couldn't shoot it 16:9 and then hope to crop in… I didn't know how big the poster displays were... there are displays inside theaters too,” he said. “At the time we were shooting 4K, 6K maybe, so I had to mount everything sideways and that was difficult because our tripods are not meant to take weight that way.” Since then, Jaramillo goes on, things have become “a little bit easier. Cameras are a little bit smaller and more modular. You can use an [Alexa] LF and crop out the 9:16 versions from that.”

Budget-conscious producers might wince at such thoroughbred equipment on a job that’s often described, Jaramillo recalls with chagrin, as “just for social. I could come back and say: Because it's for social, if you're not using an LF or an 8K Venice where you can dig into the resolution, I'd recommend a C300 mounted sideways. 

“I did a commercial [and] we had three [RED] Dragons all on custom made L-brackets,” he continued. “Sometimes they want to do both 9:16 and 16:9 and sharpness is an issue…  you can't compose someone on a third in a vertical format and hope they can compose it in a 16:9 as well. However they chop it up, you'll end up having them in the feather of the focus, which means you have to shoot deeper to get out of that, an f/5.6 or an 8. Now you're fighting light, how many photons do you have.”

“These mechanics are often lost on someone,” Jaramillo reflects. “You'll have a producer say ‘it’s only for social!’ There are a lot of regions of the Venn diagram where I'm going to fail, and the one we want is the one where it’s going to cost a lot of money. So much is riding on it. If Harrison Ford looks off of what people think he looks like, you get in trouble… you're saying ‘it's for social.’ That's our battle. The filmmakers of the 70s and 80s had to deal with pan and scan, things going to TV—‘oh man, don’t even look at it like that!’—and we have to deal with this.”

Dual Framing
Someone who’s become particularly used to dealing with it is Anna Gudbrands, a London-based cinematographer whose work includes short-form pieces for Relentless, Wonderbra and Zegna’s campaign with Jose Mourinho. Gudbrands’ recent projects have, she says, heavily involved dual framing. 

“I've been doing a lot of fashion and skincare in the summer... almost every single job I do now, they want an option for 9:16 which is Instagram, but they want the hero to be 16:9. The latest was Shoreditch Ski Club; another was for Augustinus Bader.” 

It’s a situation that inevitably involves compromise, so Gudbrands emphasizes collaboration. “If I see a challenge come up, I ask the client or the director which one really is the hero… and the decision is made on the spot—but I've never really had any problems with it, it's just a need to communicate well.”

Modern conveniences are helpful, but Gudbrands is careful to keep both frames in mind. “Most of the time I operate my own stuff, and I put up framelines in camera so I'm always aware of what's going on in the portrait format. I have the two brains and I go between them, always looking at my framelines for both. You do have to be a little bit wider—super-closeups can work well, but you have to keep in mind your lens choice. You want there to be some breathing space. You can do some close-ups, but not for the whole thing or it becomes confusing. It kind of becomes second nature.”

Gudbrands concurs with Jaramillo in that shooting for both portrait and landscape inevitably means creating a landscape image for later cropping. “If you lock the camera sideways you have the full frame but you won't have the [landscape]. Most of the time people want both,” she said. 

At the same time, working in the know-ledge that someone else will decide the frame makes the post experience particularly useful, according to Gudbrands.

“I don't sit in on edits, but I have experience of edits, so I know what cuts and what doesn't,” she said. “It's really helpful. But once you come on board, you know what the deal is. You and the director both know there's the two cut-downs, it's not a surprise.”

Enter AI
For the uncountable hours of material already in the archives, there’s artificial intelligence. Systems such as Videoverse’s Magnifi are built not only to produce a highlights reel of sports games, but also to re-frame the picture to suit any of several aspect ratios which might all be required. 

Doing either of those things by hand might be hopelessly labor-intensive; doing both without human intervention is genuinely disruptive, making new use of material that might otherwise have stayed dormant for no better reason than that it was difficult to use.

Meanwhile, consider broadcast camera operators. There’s not so much portrait here, but anyone capable of following a golf ball in flight is one of the more skilled people to lay hands on a moving-picture capture device. AI is emerging here, too, although it’s currently only mildly alarming to those people, possibly because AI cameras are mainly being deployed at events which might not otherwise have been covered at all. Pixellot’s camera system, for instance, has created whole new businesses by collapsing the cost of producing school sports for the small screen.

Still, for the time being there seems no immediate threat to the livelihoods of people who rely on their ability to keep a person, a ball, or an attractively-lit branded item inside a nicely-composed frame—no matter what shape that frame is. 

REDWOOD CITY, CALIF.—Vertical video is on the up and up both as a content and advertising format according to a new report from YuMe. Providing what is described as a natural experience within mobile and app content, vertical videos are designed for upright, portrait mode viewing.

The format drew some instant reactions from those surveyed, as 78 percent of first-time viewers said they liked the content format overall, while 79 percent say that the format is more engaging and would choose vertical viewing in most cases. In addition, 65 percent said brands that use vertical video appear more innovative.

Additional findings from the report indicate the both first-time (84 percent) and experienced (85 percent) of vertical video viewers find the format a better fit for social media and appreciate when it is available as an option. In terms of advertising, 70 percent of respondents believe vertical ads blend in better on mobile websites and 69 percent say they are less intrusive; 71 percent would like to see vertical video in more branded content, rather than product-focused advertising.

“Interest in vertical video is evidence of a broader trend toward immersive ad experiences that deliver higher brand ROI and engagement,” said Mike O’Donnell, senior vice president of North American Sales for YuMe.

For more information, view YuMe’s full report here.