Crop video

How it works

1. 1

   Add your video

   Drop, pick, or paste a file. It stays on your device.

2. 2

   Frame the crop

   Drag the box over the live preview, snap it to a shape like 1:1 or 9:16, or tap "Detect black bars" to remove them automatically.

3. 3

   Download

   Save the cropped MP4.

Crop, trim, and resize are three different edits

The words get used interchangeably and the results are nothing alike. Cropping changes the frame: it cuts pixels off the edges and keeps the duration. Trimming changes the timeline: it cuts seconds off the ends and keeps the frame. Resizing keeps both and rescales what is there. Reaching for the wrong one is how people end up with a squashed video instead of a tighter shot.

Cropping is what you want when the subject sits in part of the frame and the rest is wasted: a talking head with half the frame empty beside it, a screen recording that captured the whole desktop, a landscape clip that has to survive as a square. Because it removes pixels rather than squeezing them, nothing is distorted, and the footage that remains stays exactly as sharp as it was.

The aspect ratio you crop to is usually decided for you by wherever the video is going. Feeds want 1:1 or 4:5, stories and short-form want 9:16, and 16:9 is what the rest of the world still assumes. Crop to the ratio first and you keep control of what stays in frame, rather than letting a platform pick the center of your shot for you.

A crop tool that reads real pixels, not an uploaded copy

The crop box you drag maps onto the source pixels directly, because the source is on your disk and never leaves it. What that buys you is honesty: the preview is the output, at full resolution, with no server-side resample in between and no watermark burned over the result.

It also means there is no size limit worth mentioning. Cropping a 4K screen recording works the same as cropping a phone clip, and the file never has to survive a round trip over your connection to get there.

If you are cropping to reach a vertical format, the horizontal-to-vertical converter does the whole job in one step, including the blurred background treatment that keeps the full frame visible. To cut the length as well as the frame, trim first and crop second, so you are not spending processing time on footage you were going to throw away.

Why nothing uploads

Other tools send your video to their servers, which costs them money per file, so they add watermarks, cap file sizes, and make you sign up. This tool does the work right here in your browser using your own device. Your file is never uploaded, so there is no wait, no watermark, no size limit, and no account.

Questions

How do I remove black bars from a video?

Click "Detect black bars". The tool scans several frames, finds the actual picture, and snaps the crop box to it. You can still fine-tune by dragging.

Can I crop to a square or vertical format?

Yes. Lock the box to 1:1 for a square or 9:16 for vertical, then move it over the part of the frame you want to keep.

Does cropping reduce quality?

The kept region is re-encoded at high quality; nothing is scaled or stretched, so it stays sharp.

Does my video get uploaded?

No. Cropping happens in your browser; your file never leaves your device.

Is there a watermark?

No. The crop runs on your device, so there is no free tier to upsell you out of and nothing to stamp. The area you keep comes out at its original resolution, at any file size.

Read more about this

• Aspect ratios and safe zones, explained

  Getting the shape of the frame right is half of making a video look native to the platform it lands on. Getting the safe zone right is the other half, and almost nobody thinks about it until something important is hidden.

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