By PixelloAI Team · 30 September 2026

Reels and TikTok share a shape — vertical 9:16, short, sound-forward — so most of what works for one works for the other. The practical differences are that Reels often sit alongside a brand's more polished feed, and that many creators mix AI-generated clips with their own footage rather than posting AI video on its own.

A common workflow: generate a few 5–10 second AI clips for the parts that are hard or expensive to film — an aspirational location, a stylised product beauty shot, an abstract background for a text moment — then cut them together with your own phone footage in a video editor. The AI clips carry the production value; your footage carries the authenticity.

Generate in 9:16 from the start and pick a duration that leaves room for your edit. If a Reel is going to be 20 seconds, a single 10-second AI clip is a large chunk of it — often two or three shorter clips give you more to work with when cutting.

Keep on-screen text as an overlay in your editor or Instagram's own text tools, not in the prompt, and disclose AI-generated or AI-edited content where Instagram asks for it.

Vertical 9:16 at 1080 by 1920, ten to thirty seconds, with captions in the middle third so they are not covered by the interface. Keep the main subject centred, because Reels are cropped differently in the grid than in the full-screen player.

Use the same caption style, logo placement and end screen every time, and reuse a small set of colour and lighting words in your prompts. A recognisable look is more valuable than any single clip.