Crop Video – Free Online Video Cropper
Crop video online by dragging a box over the part of the frame you want to keep, or lock the box to 9:16, 1:1, 4:5, 16:9 or 4:3. Use it to cut away black bars, a cluttered edge or the rest of a Zoom grid. The video is cropped in your browser with hardware encoding, so nothing is uploaded, no watermark is added and the sound is copied untouched.
- Runs on your device
- WebCodecs · GPU
- FFmpeg
- Works offline
Updated
Drop your video here
How to crop a video
Step 1: Drop your video on the box above.
Step 2: Pick an Aspect ratio to lock the box, or leave it on Free and drag any rectangle. Move the box by dragging its middle and resize it from the corners.
Step 3: Keep Quality on Balanced, or choose Best for footage you will edit further.
Step 4: Press Crop and download the result. The result card shows the new size and where the crop sits in the original.
Good to know
Settings explained
- Aspect ratio
- Locks the crop box to a shape. Free lets you drag any rectangle.
- Quality
- Only used when a stream has to be re-encoded. Compatible streams are copied with no quality loss.
- Faster: Smaller file, quickest export
- Balanced: Good quality at a sensible size
- Best quality: Largest file, slowest export
Formats
How it runs
- Hardware video engine
- Video is decoded and encoded by your device’s media hardware through WebCodecs — usually several times faster than real time.
- FFmpeg (when needed)
- Older formats and a few filters use FFmpeg compiled to WebAssembly. It downloads once (about 31 MB) the first time it is needed and is cached for offline use.
Crop, resize or reframe: which one you need
Cropping removes part of the picture and keeps the rest at its original sharpness. Resizing scales the whole picture to new dimensions. Reframing makes a landscape video vertical and fills the gap. Pick by what has to happen to the edges of your shot.
| Tool | What it does to the frame | Output size | Choose it to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crop video (this page) | Keeps the area inside your box, discards the rest | The size of the box, never enlarged | Remove black bars, logos at the edge, a desktop around a window |
| Resize video | Scales everything; adds bars or crops only to change the shape | Exact sizes such as 1080p or 1080×1920 | Change resolution or hit a platform’s exact dimensions |
| Horizontal to vertical converter | Fits a landscape shot into 9:16, 4:5 or 1:1 with blur, crop, pan or bars | 1080 or 720 pixels wide | Post landscape footage to TikTok, Reels or Shorts |
| Auto reframe video | An AI-tracked crop window that follows faces | Vertical, ready to post | Talking heads who move around the frame |
What does it mean to crop a video?
To crop a video is to cut away the outer parts of every frame and keep a rectangle inside it, for the whole length of the clip. The length, sound and frame rate stay the same; only the picture gets smaller in width, height or both.
People crop to remove black bars burned into a film, to cut a screen recording down to one window, to isolate one speaker in a Zoom or Teams grid, or to turn a landscape shot into a square or vertical post. If you meant shortening the clip, that is trimming: the video trimmer does it without re-encoding.
Crop sizes for 9:16, 1:1 and 4:5
When you choose a ratio without drawing a box, ProMedia uses the largest box of that shape centred in the frame. The table shows the size you get from common sources. The crop is never scaled up, so a 9:16 slice of a 1080p landscape video stays 608 pixels wide.
| Aspect ratio | From 1920×1080 (landscape HD) | From 3840×2160 (4K) | From 1080×1920 (phone, vertical) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9:16 (TikTok, Reels, Shorts) | 608×1080 (32% of the width) | 1214×2160 | Whole frame, copied without re-encoding |
| 1:1 (square post) | 1080×1080 | 2160×2160 | 1080×1080 |
| 4:5 (Instagram portrait) | 864×1080 | 1728×2160 | 1080×1350 |
| 4:3 (classic TV) | 1440×1080 | 2880×2160 | 1080×810 |
| 16:9 (YouTube) | Whole frame, copied without re-encoding | Whole frame, copied without re-encoding | 1080×608 |
Does cropping a video reduce quality or file size?
Cropping keeps the remaining pixels at their original sharpness, but the video has to be encoded again because every frame changes. At Balanced quality the difference inside the crop is hard to see; Best spends more bits for footage you will keep editing. The audio is copied without changes.
The file usually gets smaller, because there are fewer pixels to store. How much depends on the crop and the content, so the estimated output size is shown under the options before you start. A box that covers the whole frame is not re-encoded at all: the video is copied as it is.
How to crop a video on iPhone, Android, Windows or Mac
This video cropper works in any modern browser with the same steps. Each system also has its own option, and they differ in what they can do.
iPhone and iPad
The Photos app crops videos: tap Edit, then the crop icon, and pick a ratio such as 9:16 or square. Use this page in Safari for clips in the Files app, for exact boxes on screen recordings, or to keep MKV and WebM files in their format.
Android
Google Photos has Crop in its video editor. In Chrome on this page you can draw a free-form box, which helps when cutting one speaker out of a meeting grid.
Windows
Media Player has no crop. Clipchamp, which comes with Windows 11, can crop on its timeline and exports a new video. Here you drag the file from File Explorer into the browser and draw the box directly on the frame.
Mac
QuickTime Player cannot crop video. iMovie crops by zooming into the frame. In Safari or Chrome here, you can draw an exact rectangle and keep the original format.
Common cropping jobs
- Remove black bars from a video. Leave the ratio on Free and drag the box to the edges of the picture area, inside the bars. Letterboxed films and phone clips with a bar on each side are the usual cases.
- Crop a Zoom recording to one person. Zoom saves local recordings as MP4. Draw a Free box around the speaker’s tile; switch the ratio to 16:9 first if the tile should stay widescreen.
- Crop a screen recording to one window. Draw the box around the window; the smaller frame is easier to read on phones and makes a smaller file.
- Crop video to square for a feed post. Choose 1:1 and slide the box over the subject before pressing Crop.
Tips & troubleshooting
Trim first, crop second: the video trimmer cuts losslessly, so the crop then only has to encode the part you keep, which is faster.
Need the full 1080×1920 for a landscape clip? The horizontal to vertical video converter crops and scales to 1080 pixels wide in one pass.
Blurring something is often better than cropping it away. Blur part of a video to hide a face or a number plate and keep the rest of the shot.
Cropping a sideways phone video? Rotate the video first, so the box matches what you actually see.
If the cropped file is still too large to send, the video compressor shrinks it to an exact size in MB.
Crop Video FAQ
Does cropping a video reduce quality?
Not visibly at Balanced or Best. The pixels you keep are not scaled, but the video is re-encoded because every frame changes, so a tiny amount of detail is lost. Choose Best if you will edit or re-export the clip again.
How do I crop a video to 9:16 for TikTok or Reels?
Choose 9:16, slide the box over your subject and press Crop. From a 1080p landscape video the crop is 608×1080, which the app upscales. For a sharper full-size vertical video, use the horizontal to vertical video converter or start from 4K footage.
How do I remove black bars from a video?
Leave the aspect ratio on Free, drag the crop box so its edges sit just inside the picture and press Crop. Bars that are part of the image are removed for good, and the video keeps its frame rate and sound.
Can I crop and cut a video at the same time?
Do it in two quick steps: shorten it with the video trimmer, which is lossless, then crop the trimmed clip here. Doing the trim first means less footage to encode.
Does cropping a video make the file smaller?
Usually, because fewer pixels are stored. The exact size depends on the crop and the picture, and the estimate under the options shows it before you press Crop. A box covering the whole frame copies the video unchanged.
Can I crop a video on my phone?
Yes. Open this page in Safari or Chrome, pick the clip and drag the crop box with your finger. Short clips crop quickly on a phone; for long 4K files a computer is faster.
Is your video uploaded anywhere?
No. Your video is processed by your own browser on your own device. There is no server that receives files, so nothing is uploaded, stored or shared. You can even switch to airplane mode once the page has loaded.