The way audiences watch live events has changed. The way much of that content is produced hasn’t.

The world’s biggest sports, news and entertainment moments are still predominantly produced in horizontal (16:9), and for good reason. It’s the mainstream TV format. It gives production teams the canvas they need for multi-camera coverage, graphics and the editorial craft expected from premium live broadcasts.

But increasingly, that isn’t the format audiences are watching.

Fans are discovering highlights through TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and other vertical, social feeds. They’re watching on mobile. When something happens live, they expect to see it immediately.

For broadcasters and rights holders, this creates a new challenge. It’s no longer enough to create great live broadcasts. You need to be able to cut, reshape and distribute it for different audiences while the moment still matters.

At IBC 2026, we’re showing how the latest developments in Grabyo Studio are helping production and digital teams do exactly that.

From broadcast production to vertical video, in real time

Traditional workflows often treat vertical video as something that happens after production.

A live moment is clipped from a 16:9 feed, transferred across into an editing workflow, manually reframed, captioned, branded and prepared for manual upload to its destination. Each individual step may only take a few minutes, but together they create a delay between something happening live and the rights holder being able to share it in the format audiences want.

Meanwhile, that same moment is gaining its own momentum online. 

Fans are clipping it. Creators are reacting to it. Aggregators are reshaping it. The conversation has started before the rights holder’s own content is ready.

That’s why we believe vertical video needs to become part of the live workflow itself.

Grabyo Studio has evolved to give digital teams a faster route from a high-quality 16:9 live production to content designed specifically for vertical viewing, without requiring a separate production operation to get there.

AI-assisted, editor controlled

Speed matters, but AI shouldn’t dictate the final product.

Our approach to AI in Grabyo Studio is simple: use AI to remove time consuming work, while keeping editorial teams in control of the output.

With AI Smart Cropping, Grabyo can automatically transform 16:9 video into a 9:16 frame, intelligently tracking the most important action and keeping it within view.

But not every moment can, or should, be left entirely to an algorithm.

Editors can adjust the AI-generated output using a fast, intuitive keyframe interface, correcting framing or changing the focus whenever they need to. AI provides the first pass; the editor retains full editorial control.

That philosophy runs throughout the new Studio experience.

Vertical video is more than cropping the live feed

Creating content for a vertical screen is more than cutting the sides off a horizontal video.

Graphics need to fit. Captions need to remain on screen and readable. Important action needs to stay visible. Platform interfaces can obscure different areas of the screen. And sometimes a full-screen crop isn’t the best way to present the content at all.

The latest additions to Grabyo Studio are designed for that. 

New layout templates give editors effective options to transform horizontal content for vertical viewing, from full-screen crops and zoomed layouts to picture-in-picture formats and blurred backgrounds.

Safe areas help teams position captions, graphics, logos and key visual elements away from the areas commonly occupied by social platform buttons and calls to action.

And with updated Video Overlay enhancements, teams can add text, shapes, watermarks, graphics and animations directly to their content, then save designs as reusable templates.

The aim is not simply to make horizontal video fit a vertical screen. It’s to help teams create content that feels like it was designed for that screen in the first place.

Smarter captions for every audience

Captions have become an essential part of mobile video, particularly when audiences are scrolling and watching without sound.

Grabyo Studio’s new AI Smart Captions bring transcription, translation, styling and formatting into the same workflow.

AI-generated transcription provides a starting point that editors can review and amend, while automatic translation can create captions in up to three languages.

Teams can customise fonts, colours, sizes, backgrounds, positioning and effects to fit their brand. Multi-speaker detection can also distinguish between different voices, with custom styling available for each.

Importantly, captions can intelligently reformat for different aspect ratios, adjusting copy length and sizing to work within the available display area.

It means teams can move from a live moment to a captioned, branded and platform-ready vertical clip without jumping between multiple tools.

Turn live moments into highlights faster

We’ve also made it easier to work with multiple moments from a live event.

With new multi-marker workflows, editors can select a group of markers and export each one as an individual clip, helping teams rapidly turn key moments into separate pieces of content.

Alternatively, multiple markers can be combined into a single clip to quickly create highlight packages, round-ups or content with unwanted sections removed.

For teams covering fast-moving sports, news and entertainment, this removes another layer of repetitive editing from the process and makes it easier to create more content while an event is still live.

A faster workflow from live broadcast to social feed

There are improvements across the wider Studio workflow too.

New audio waveforms make it easier to identify precise moments within live content, including support for viewing waveforms across multiple audio tracks;  this is useful for teams working with multi-language live streams.

Editors can now view campaign assets directly within Live Clipping and search for assets across multiple campaign folders, making it easier to find and reuse existing content.

We’ve also expanded our TikTok integration, with support for both uploads and Direct Post, giving teams another route to move finished content directly into the platforms where audiences are watching.

Individually, these improvements remove steps from the workflow. Together, they move Grabyo Studio towards its core product vision: shortening the distance between a moment happening live and an audience experiencing it in the format they expect, on the platform they want. 

First shouldn’t mean worst

The opportunity around vertical video gives broadcasters, publishers and rights holders the ability to own their biggest moments wherever their audiences choose to watch them.

That means taking the quality, access and editorial expertise of a professional live production and combining it with the speed and agility that digital platforms demand.

AI can help close that gap. Automation can remove repetitive tasks. But the people who understand the story, the audience and the brand should remain in control.

At IBC 2026, we’ll be demonstrating the latest Grabyo Studio workflows live, showing how teams can move from 16:9 live content to polished, platform-ready vertical video while the moment is still happening.

Because in the race to reach today’s audiences, creating the right content matters.

Creating it at the right time matters just as much.

Join us at RAI Amsterdam to see the new Grabyo Studio in action.

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