Presented herein are techniques for cropping video streams to create an optimized layout in which participants of a meeting are a similar size. A user device receives a plurality of video streams, each video stream including at least one face of a participant participating in a video communication session. Faces in one or more of the plurality of video streams are cropped so that faces in the plurality of video streams are approximately equal in size, to produce a plurality of processed video streams. The plurality of processed video streams are sorted according to video stream widths to produce sorted video streams and the plurality of sorted video streams are distributed for display across a smallest number of rows possible on a display of the user device.