Crop Video Online
Cut away the edges of a video: a black border, a messy desk, a watermark in the corner, or everything around the one person you want. Drag the box, type exact pixels or lock it to a ratio. The video is processed in your browser and never uploaded.
How to crop a video
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Open the video
Choose a file or drop it on the box. It opens in the page straight from your device.
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Set the crop box
Drag the box to move it and drag any of the eight handles to resize it. The darkened area is what gets cut. For exact values, type the left, top, width and height in pixels.
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Lock a ratio if you need one
Pick 9:16, 1:1, 4:5, 16:9 or 4:3 and the box keeps that shape while you resize it. Free lets you draw any rectangle.
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Crop and download
Press Crop video, watch the progress, and download the MP4 when it is done. Cancel stops it at once.
What people crop out
Black bars
A video that was letterboxed or pillarboxed somewhere along the way. Crop the bars off and the picture fills the screen again.
A screen recording area
Keep one window or one part of a screen capture and drop the taskbar, browser tabs and notifications.
A logo or timestamp in a corner
If it sits near the edge, a small crop removes it. Only crop footage you have the right to edit.
One person from a group shot
Tighten a wide shot around the speaker. Lock 9:16 to get a vertical clip for TikTok or Reels in the same step.
Cropping versus resizing
Cropping removes part of the picture. The output is exactly the size of the box you drew, in the original pixels, so a 900 × 900 crop of a 1920 × 1080 video comes out as a 900 × 900 video. Nothing is stretched or upscaled.
Resizing changes the frame to a target shape and size, such as 1080 × 1920 for a Short. If that is what you are after, the video resizer is quicker: pick 9:16 and slide the crop window left or right, or fit the whole picture on a blurred background instead of cutting anything.
Both tools share the same engine, so the output format is the same: MP4 with H.264 video in Chrome, Edge and Safari, with the sound copied across when it is AAC. The exact format and size are shown before you start.
Getting a clean crop
- Scrub before you commit. The box stays in the same place for the whole video. Drag the playhead to the start, middle and end to make sure nothing important drifts out of it.
- Use the grid. The thirds lines inside the box help you place eyes on the upper line, which usually looks better than dead centre.
- Nudge with the keyboard. Click the box, then use the arrow keys to move it and Shift with an arrow key to resize it. Hold Alt for finer steps.
- Even numbers only. Video encoders need an even width and height, so the tool rounds the box down by a pixel when needed.
- Going vertical? Check where the app’s buttons and captions sit with our Reels safe zone guide before you place the crop.
Private by design
Most online croppers upload your video to a server, process it there and send it back. This one does the work inside your browser with WebCodecs, the video encoding built into Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox. The file is read from your disk in pieces, the cropped copy is built on your device, and no part of it is sent anywhere. There is no account and no watermark.
Cropping every clip to 9:16 by hand?
Short.now reframes long videos to 9:16 automatically, with face tracking that keeps the speaker in shot, and adds captions. Paste a link or upload once and get a batch of vertical clips.
Questions
Open the video on this page, drag the crop box over the part you want to keep, and press Crop video. It is free, there is no watermark, and the file is not uploaded.
Yes. Pick 1:1 or 9:16 in Aspect ratio and the box locks to that shape. Move it and resize it from the corners; it keeps the ratio.
The kept area keeps its original pixels, but the video is re-encoded once, at high quality. On a phone screen the difference is very hard to see.
Yes, in Safari on iOS 16.4 or later, which added WebCodecs video encoding (per MDN browser compatibility data, checked November 2026). Drag the handles with your finger.
Yes. AAC sound, which almost every phone and camera records, is copied across as it is. If the browser cannot handle the audio it tells you before you download.
H.264 video needs an even width and height, so an odd number is rounded down by one pixel.
