Read the Preview as a post mock-ups before you publish

You can check an export against a phone screen before you upload it. Preview as a post plays the finished file inside a phone frame and draws the screen furniture of three apps on top, using the caption, tags and sound title from your Details tab. It shows what surrounds the video as well as what is in it.

Open the preview

1. Export the project. A quick render is enough for a check.
2. Open Media in the left panel and stay on Assets.
3. Scroll below the files to the Exports list.
4. Click an export row. Its tooltip reads "Preview as a post".

The window opens on Original and starts muted. The speaker button in the top-left corner of the screen turns the sound on. Press Esc or click outside the window to close it.

The four views

• Original shows the file at its own frame size with no phone around it. Hover over it for play and pause, a scrub bar and a time readout. Use this view to check the cut.
• TikTok adds the Following and For You header, a button column on the right, the @handle, your caption with the tags in bold, and the sound line.
• Instagram adds a Reels header, a Follow button beside the handle, a caption cut at two lines, and a sound pill.
• YouTube adds a Shorts header, a Subscribe button beside the handle, Like and Dislike buttons and a two-line caption.

What to look for

• The crop. In the three phone views the video fills the screen, so a widescreen export is cropped at the sides. Original shows the whole frame.
• The lower left. The handle, caption and sound line sit over a dark gradient across the bottom. Keep your own titles above that zone.
• The right edge. The button column covers a strip of the picture there.
• Caption length. TikTok shows three lines and the other two views show two. Make the first line carry the hook.
• The numbers. The like and comment counts are fixed sample values. They say nothing about your video.

Where the words come from

The mock-ups read three fields from Details: the caption, the tags and the sound title. When the sound title is empty, the sound line reads "original sound" followed by the handle.

The handle shows as you, with an @ in front on TikTok and YouTube and none on Instagram. The Details tab has no handle field, so ask the Agent to set your handle and the mock-ups use it from then on.

Fix it and look again

The caption, tags and sound title are read from Details, so you can fix the wording there and reopen the preview without rendering again. A change to the picture needs a new export. Delete the old row from the Exports list when the new one replaces it.

Make it the last step

Run every export through Original first for the cut, then through the platform you are posting to. Open DepCut, render a draft of your current project and step through the four views.